Ariana Grande is opening up on the darkest time of her life, and how making music led her through it. On the latest episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, the Oscar-nominated Wicked star said releasing two albums in less than six months was instrumental in helping her deal with grief, depression, anxiety, and PTSD.
Grande’s album Sweetener was released in August 2018 and marked her first new music following the 2017 terrorist attack at her concert in Manchester, England. The suicide bombing left 22 people dead and wounded hundreds of others.
In February 2019, she followed that up with her chart-topper “Thank U, Next,” mere months after the overdose death of her ex-boyfriend Mac Miller and the end of her engagement to SNL funnyman Pete Davidson.
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“I think I needed to be doing that,” she said of throwing herself into that music. “I was doing so much therapy, and I was dealing with PTSD and all different kinds of grief and depression, and anxiety. I was, of course, treating it very seriously, but having music be a part of that remedy was absolutely contributing to saving my life.”
According to Grande, her music label, Republic Records, tried to slow down the release of “Thank U, Next” immediately after “Sweetener,” but she insisted on moving forward as “a means of survival.”
“I just said, ‘I don’t really care about the formula. I don’t want to play by the rules at this moment, because this is what I need for my soul,’” she recalled. “It felt really healing and freeing. It was just such a beautiful moment of connection.”
The prioritization paid off well, mentally, emotionally and commercially. “Thank U, Next” went multiplatinum in several countries and garnered Grande four Grammy Award nominations. It ranked as No. 1 on Rolling Stone’s list of The 50 Best Albums of 2019.
Five years later, the former Nickelodeon star is riding a career high in Jon M. Chu’s blockbuster adaptation of Broadway’s Wicked, for which she’s netted Oscar, Golden Globe, and SAG nominations. She’s also romantically linked to costar Ethan Slater after rebounding from her near two-year marriage to Dalton Gomez.
—Karu F. Daniels, New York Daily News (TNS)
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