Songfacts®:

• "Bad Thing (Bunny Hop)" finds Ariana Grande considering a return to an old flame, even though she knows it might not be the smartest move.
• Fans have linked the track's subject to dancer Ricky Alvarez. He and Grande dated from 2015 to 2016 before publicly rekindling their relationship in mid-2026. The line driving most of the speculation points straight to their shared past:
  
  Meet you by the staircase where we
  Fell in love, let's do it twice
  
  There is a slight chronological complication to that theory. The song is on the album Petal, which was announced in April 2026 with a July 31 release date, meaning the album's recording had to be substantially locked in well before its release. However, it's possible "Bad Thing (Bunny Hop)" was written or finalized late in the Petal sessions, after Grande and Alvarez reunited.
• The subtitle "(Bunny Hop)" generated almost as much discussion as the lyrics, as the phrase never appears in the song. One theory connects it to Grande's 2016 Dangerous Woman era, where she famously wore black bunny ears on the album cover, a period that overlapped with her original relationship with Alvarez.
  
  Another theory takes a more literal approach, reading "bunny hop" as slang for jumping back to an old ex.
• Musically, the track leans into a blend of new wave and pop-rock, making it one of the key moments on Petal where Grande embraces a guitar-driven edge. That provides another callback to Dangerous Woman, where she first began incorporating pop-rock elements into her R&B sound.
• Sitting late in the tracklist as Track 11, right before the closing song "Nowhere, Nobody," "Bad Thing (Bunny Hop)" brings a playful, slightly reckless energy to the album's final stretch.