Ariana Grande is speaking out!
The Sweetener star is the subject of a feature in the August issue of Vogue, and she’s got a lot to talk about — love, loss, and going on tour to avoid dealing with the PTSD from the tragedies that have struck around her in the last couple years.
Related: Ariana Gets Introspective With Powerful, Emotional Instagram Post
She’s been through a lot recently, as she notes in the interview, and it’s been a hell of a past couple years for the thank u, next superstar.
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Avoiding PTSD
She’s not afraid to confront that, opening up about how going on tour was a way to escape some of the inevitable grief that crept in over Mac Miller‘s death, the Manchester terror attack, and more.
In fact, (below):
“I was researching healing and PTSD and talking to therapists, and everyone was like, ‘You need a routine, a schedule.’ Of course because I’m an extremist, I’m like, OK, I’ll go on tour! But it’s hard to sing songs that are about wounds that are so fresh. It’s fun, it’s pop music, and I’m not trying to make it sound like anything that it’s not, but these songs to me really do represent some heavy s**t.”
And specifically regarding Manchester, she opened up more about the aftermath of that attack and what she sees as her role in helping the healing from here (below):
“It’s not my trauma. It’s those families’. It’s their losses, and so it’s hard to just let it all out without thinking about them reading this and reopening the memory for them. I’m proud that we were able to raise a lot of money with the intention of giving people a feeling of love or unity, but at the end of the day, it didn’t bring anyone back. Everyone was like, Wow, look at this amazing thing, and I was like, What the f**k are you guys talking about? We did the best we could, but on a totally real level we did nothing. I’m sorry. I have a lot to say that could probably help people that I do want to share, but I have a lot that I still need to process myself and will probably never be ready to talk about.”
She continued:
For a long time I didn’t want to talk to anyone about anything, because I didn’t want to think about anything. I kind of just wanted to bury myself in work and not focus on the real stuff, because I couldn’t believe it was real. I loved going back into the studio with Pharrell because he just has this magical outlook on everything. He truly believes that the light is coming. And I’m like, ‘Bruh, is it, though?'”
Wow…
Mac Miller’s Death
Mac’s death still haunts her, too, as we learn in the feature here. One particularly poignant passage reveals quite a bit about the behind-the-scenes happenings both from when she and the rapper were together, and afterwards before his accidental overdose (below):
“When I ask Grande whether it is fair to call Thank U, Next a response to Miller’s death, the tears return, along with the reciprocal apologies. Her characteristic heavy eyeliner, flared upward at the edges in the Maria Callas style, never runs. ‘It’s just hard to hear it so plainly put,’ she says. She has rarely commented on her relationship with Miller and has taken umbrage when the media has sought to define her according to her romantic relationships. But in May 2018, she made an exception in the form of a widely admired clap back after a fan of Miller’s took to Twitter following the rapper’s arrest for drunk driving, suggesting that being spurned by Grande was the cause. Her reply was swift and lacerating: ‘shaming and blaming a woman for a man’s inability to keep his shit together is a very major problem. let’s please stop doing that.’
‘People don’t see any of the real stuff that happens, so they are loud about what they think happened,’ she says now. ‘They didn’t see the years of work and fighting and trying, or the love and exhaustion. That tweet came from a place of complete defeat, and you have no idea how many times I warned him that that would happen and fought that fight, for how many years of our friendship, of our relationship. You have no idea so you’re not allowed to pull that card, because you don’t f**king know. That’s where that came from.’ Grande spent years consumed by worry about Miller. Friends with her during the Dangerous Woman tour recall a woman up at all hours, desperately tracking his whereabouts to ensure he wasn’t on a bender. ‘It’s pretty all-consuming,’ she says of her grief over Miller. ‘By no means was what we had perfect, but, like, f**k. He was the best person ever, and he didn’t deserve the demons he had. I was the glue for such a long time, and I found myself becoming . . . less and less sticky. The pieces just started to float away.'”
Related to that, dealing with grief has left her more open in her art — as well as in her relationships — as she’s learned more about life and the struggles other people go through.
The 26-year-old explained (below):
“I’ve been open in my art and open in my DMs and my conversations with my fans directly, and I want to be there for them, so I share things that I think they’ll find comfort in knowing that I go through as well. But also there are a lot of things that I swallow on a daily basis that I don’t want to share with them, because they’re mine. But they know that. They can literally see it in my eyes. They know when I’m disconnected, when I’m happy, when I’m tired. It’s this weird thing we have. We’re like f**king E.T. and Elliott.”
Grande added:
“I’m a person who’s been through a lot and doesn’t know what to say about any of it to myself, let alone the world. I see myself onstage as this perfectly polished, great-at-my-job entertainer, and then in situations like this I’m just this little basket-case puddle of figuring it out. I have to be the luckiest girl in the world, and the unluckiest, for sure. I’m walking this fine line between healing myself and not letting the things that I’ve gone through be picked at before I’m ready, and also celebrating the beautiful things that have happened in my life and not feeling scared that they’ll be taken away from me because trauma tells me that they will be, you know what I mean?”
Powerful!
The pop singer opened up more about her reeling from her ex’s tragic passing, recalling staying in New York at the time and visiting Jungle City Studios:
“My friends know how much solace music brings me, so I think it was an all-around, let’s-get-her-there type situation. But if I’m completely honest, I don’t remember those months of my life because I was (a) so drunk and (b) so sad. I don’t really remember how it started or how it finished, or how all of a sudden there were 10 songs on the board. I think that this is the first album and also the first year of my life where I’m realizing that I can no longer put off spending time with myself, just as me. I’ve been boo’d up my entire adult life. I’ve always had someone to say goodnight to. So Thank U, Next was this moment of self-realization. It was this scary moment of ‘Wow, you have to face all this stuff now. No more distractions. You have to heal all this shit.'”
We had never heard her be so candid about that heartbreaking time in her life.
A Brief Message About Pete
While the A-lister didn’t share much about her former fiancée Pete Davidson, here’s what she had to say about their short-lived romance in New York:
“My friends were like, ‘Come! We’re gonna have a fun summer.’ And then I met Pete, and it was an amazing distraction. It was frivolous and fun and insane and highly unrealistic, and I loved him, and I didn’t know him. I’m like an infant when it comes to real life and this old soul, been-around-the-block-a-million-times artist. I still don’t trust myself with the life stuff.”
Friends On Grande…
Ari wasn’t the only one who spoke about Ari in the piece, however. Several high-profile friends came forward to speak about her resiliency and talent, too.
Miley Cyrus on the 7 Rings songstress (below):
“Ariana’s an open book. She has always shared her experiences with this beautiful blend of reality and the fantasy that pop culture requires. But holding her in my arms that night and feeling her shake from the loss of lives, literally feeling her heart pounding against mine—when you can let down the personas and cry with the rest of the world, it’s unifying. It’s a reminder that music can be our greatest healer.”
Amen!
Patti LaBelle added (below):
“She’s surpassed her peers. And she does everything herself, which is not always the way with the young baby girls. She doesn’t need any machines. She’s a baby who’s able to sing like an older black woman.”
WOW!!!
More Patti, recalling a time both women sang for the Obama family at the White House, and Grande was exceptionally nervous before the performance (below):
“I said, ‘Girl, you’re a beast. Go up there and sing like that white-black woman you are.’ Ariana can sing me under the table — and listen, I can sing.”
Amazing!
Huge praise coming from an icon like Patti LaBelle!!!
The Music Video
In addition to the feature interview, Ari also showed off a new music video for In My Head, as you can see (below):
There you have it!
Her Gorgeous Cover
Ari and her pup Toulouse gaze into the camera for the August cover! We can’t wait to see more.
Until then, what do U think about all these new revelations and more, Perezcious readers?? Sound OFF about all things Ariana Grande in the comments (below)…
And if you want to read the full feature over at Vogue, click HERE.
[Image via WENN]
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