Ethan Slater is currently on Broadway in Spamalot. (Cindy Ord/Getty Images)

Some fans were angry at Grande at the time for getting involved with a married man. Sources said, though, that both Grande and Slater were already separated from their spouses when they began dating.

New music video

The emotional video for “We Can’t Be Friends,” is an homage to the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which starred Jim Carey and Kate Winslet as a former couple who erase each other from their respective memories.

The video shows Grande erasing the memories of an ex, played by American Horror Story star Evan Peters.

It ends with both of them completing the procedure. They later pass each other with different partners.

Grande told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in a March 7 interview that the original film’s themes Involving love, memory and identity are what inspired her the most while writing the album.

“I think the movie is so beloved because so many people can relate to knowing that something isn’t right but loving so much and wanting to stay,” she said. “I think it kind of fell into place that these songs had little tidbits of that theme. I just felt really inspired by it.”

Is it a divorce album?

In its album review, Rolling Stone described Eternal Sunshine as "a divorce album that goes through all the stages of grief." The Guardian called it a “perceptive post-divorce album” that is “nearly spotless.”

The first track, “Intro (End of the World),” opens with the line: “How can I tell if I’m in the right relationship?”

“Aren’t you really supposed to know that shit / feel it in your bones and own that shit / I don’t know,” Grande sings. “Then I had this interaction I’ve been thinking ‘bout for like five weeks / Wonder if he’s thinking ‘bout it too and smiling / wonder if he knows that that’s been what’s inspiring me / wonder if he’s judging me like I am right now.”

Fans are also getting the message, praising the singer on X for writing about “healing and going through the stages of grief from her divorce.”

One fan called it “her best work to date,” writing that those who’ve “been through some tough relationships or witnessed a divorce first-hand” will “understand it fully.”

Is Ethan Slater the inspiration behind 'The Boy Is Mine?'

The eighth track from the album was inspired by Brandy and Monica’s 1998 hit of the same name. The original song is about two women who confront each other over their mutual affection for the same man, each claiming him as “mine.”

In Grande's version, she has a different take.

“How can it be? You and me / Might be meant to be, can't unsee it / But I don't wanna cause no scene,” she sings. “I'm usually so unproblematic / So independent / Tell me why / 'Cause the boy is mine, mine.”

Fans have suggested that the lyrics are about Slater and the situation surrounding their respective divorces.

“Reading these lyrics and knowing it's written [about] Ethan Slater,” one fan wrote on X. Others have simply referred to it as, “The Ethan Slater Song.”

When speaking to Lowe about “The Boy Is Mine,” Grande said she’d “always wanted to reimagine” the original in some way.

“I kind of was like, ‘This is a very bad idea, I think, but there is a large group of my fans that really, they do love a bad-girl anthem,’” she explained. "And this is kind of an elevated version of that.”

Meanwhile, fans have praised Grande for not sampling the original song.

“I’m actually so glad Ariana’s version of ‘The Boy is Mine’ doesn’t sample Brandy and Monica’s and is an original song,” one fan tweeted. “I just know that the collapse this song is going to cause will be INSANE.”

In a Dec. 2023 interview, Monica told The Hollywood Reporter that the song was “a part of history that I would love to remain untouched” and that if anyone should make it, they ought to “make it their own and do something totally different.”