Songfacts®:

• Ariana told MTV News that this song is so emotional and personal to her, that she sometimes has a hard time singing live. "I almost cried last night when I was singing it onstage, 'cause it's about something that's so special to me when I hear it. It strikes a personal chord," she said. "'Honeymoon Avenue' is about knowing you are at the end of a relationship and wishing it could not be the end and go back to the beginning and start over."
• The song was one of five on Yours Truly to be produced by The Rascals, who comprise Ariana's former Victorious co-star Leon Thomas and his partner Chris Tines. "We got a 20-piece orchestra to lay some strings. At that moment, I'm going to be real, I felt like a boss," Thomas recalled to MTV News. "Producing something and then having all those people working so hard, it was crazy."
  
  Thomas added that he looked to songwriter Diane Warren (Cher's "If I Could Turn Back Time," Aerosmith's "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing") for inspiration. "It needed to feel like a really big '90s record, almost like Diane Warren.... just how big those records felt, we wanted that," he said.
• The song is Ariana's favorite track on Yours Truly. She explained to Rolling Stone: "It strikes a chord with me. It's been a part of my life for three years now and it's come full circle. In the beginning, it sounded like an upbeat, Motown pop song and I was like 'This song is really sad and it means a lot to me so we need to make it sound like the lyrical content.' Then we made it sound like what the song's about. It's even more special to me now. It gives me this weird, bittersweet feeling that almost makes me want to cry."
• Leon Thomas' voice can also be heard at the beginning of the song. "The first voice you hear is my dear friend Leon Thomas," tweeted Ariana. "From years of TV to making my first album together!"
• Tommy Brown co-produced the track and Victoria Monét helped with the writing. It was the first of many collaborations between Grande, Brown and Victoria Monét, the start of a partnership that has earned several Hot 100 #1 hits. Brown and Monét also helped develop Grande's unique sound, which is a blend of pop, R&B, and doo-wop.
  
  "The process of watching her work and working with artists who know what they want is A1," Brown told Billboard. "I always felt like she knew what she wanted."