Ariana Grande

#1On May 22, 2017, Ariana Grande had just finished performing at Manchester Arena.

#2Thousands of fans had spent the night singing along with her. People were beginning to leave.

#3Then a bomb exploded.

#4Twenty-two victims were killed.

#5They had come to see Ariana perform.

#6Ariana was there. Her mother, Joan, was there too. Soon afterward, Ariana left Manchester and returned to Florida.

#7The next problem in her career was not an album.

#8It was not a single.

#9It was not how to keep a tour profitable.

#10It was whether she could ever stand onstage and sing those same songs again.

#11How do you return to performing when people who came to hear you sing have just been killed outside your concert?

#12That question hit Ariana harder because, until then, moving forward had been one of the most consistent patterns of her life.

#13Ariana grew up in Boca Raton, Florida.

#14She loved theater from childhood and performed in local productions. As a teenager, she made it to Broadway in the musical "13."

#15But one of the things she wanted most was to make her own music.

#16At around fourteen, Ariana was already talking about making an R&B album.

#17The response was not especially encouraging.

#18What was a fourteen-year-old going to sing about? Who was going to buy an R&B record from her?

#19Then another opportunity arrived.

#20Nickelodeon cast her in "Victorious."

#21Ariana became Cat Valentine, the funny, sweet, slightly strange girl with bright red hair.

#22Cat became popular.

#23And that created a strange problem.

#24People already knew the name Ariana Grande.

#25They just did not know her as the singer Ariana wanted to become.

#26So while she was working on television, she kept going to the studio.

#27She recorded covers. She worked on songs. She kept trying to figure out what her own voice sounded like outside the character people already loved.

#28Eventually she released an early single called "Put Your Hearts Up."

#29Ariana later made it very clear that she did not like it.

#30The bright bubblegum-pop sound felt too manufactured and too closely tied to the young Nickelodeon audience around Cat Valentine.

#31She had finally released music under her own name, and even that did not feel like the beginning she wanted.

#32So she changed direction.

#33Around that period, Ariana began working with people including Victoria Monét and Tommy Brown.

#34When Victoria first met Ariana, she did not really know much about "Victorious." Ariana was still wearing the red hair associated with Cat.

#35Then Victoria heard her warming up.

#36The voice immediately caught her attention.

#37Victoria sent Ariana a song she had written called "Honeymoon Avenue."

#38It would eventually become the opening track on Ariana's debut album, "Yours Truly."

#39The public was still looking at Cat Valentine.

#40Inside the studio, people were starting to hear a very different Ariana.

#41Then came "The Way" in 2013, featuring Mac Miller.

#42The song was much closer to the R&B-influenced pop Ariana had wanted to make in the first place.

#43It became a major hit.

#44"Yours Truly" debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.

#45Ariana did not escape Cat Valentine by giving speeches about who she really was.

#46She made different music.

#47And enough people liked it that the public gradually learned to see her differently.

#48"My Everything" followed.

#49Then "Dangerous Woman."

#50Within a few years, Ariana was no longer simply a Nickelodeon actress who also sang.

#51She was one of the biggest pop stars in the world.

#52And for most of her life, continuing to work had seemed to lead somewhere.

#53If one route did not work, she tried another.

#54If one version of the music felt wrong, she made another one.

#55If a door opened, she walked through it.

#56Then Manchester broke that rhythm.

#57After the attack, Ariana returned to her grandmother's home in Florida.

#58Her manager, Scooter Braun, went to see her.

#59They talked about performing again.

#60Ariana said she could not do it.

#61She did not think she could sing those songs anymore.

#62She did not think she could put those outfits back on.

#63They decided the remaining tour dates would be canceled.

#64Then, two days later, Braun got off a flight and found sixteen messages from Ariana asking him to call her.

#65She had changed her mind.

#66She felt that doing nothing was impossible.

#67And the place she wanted to return to was not some safer city far away.

#68It was Manchester.

#69When Ariana returned to Manchester, she met survivors and families of the victims.

#70One of them was the mother of fifteen-year-old Olivia Campbell-Hardy, who had been killed in the attack.

#71Ariana started crying during the meeting.

#72Olivia's mother told her that Olivia would not have wanted that.

#73She would have wanted Ariana to sing the hits.

#74That conversation changed the show Ariana was planning.

#75So when "One Love Manchester" took place on June 4, 2017, it was not only a solemn memorial.

#76People danced.

#77They sang songs they knew.

#78Artists including Miley Cyrus, Coldplay, Katy Perry, and Justin Bieber joined the event.

#79A local school choir also performed, including children connected to the original concert.

#80At one point, a young singer became emotional, and Ariana moved close to her as they sang together.

#81Near the end, Ariana stood alone and performed "Over the Rainbow."

#82She struggled to hold herself together.

#83The crowd applauded while she paused.

#84She had returned to the stage.

#85But that was not the end of what Manchester had done to her.

#86It would be easy to stop the story at One Love Manchester.

#87Something terrible happened.

#88Ariana was afraid.

#89She returned anyway.

#90Fear defeated.

#91Story over.

#92That is not how Ariana described what happened afterward.

#93She continued to experience PTSD and serious anxiety.

#94Being able to perform again was not the same thing as being healed.

#95On "Sweetener," she began putting some of that emotional landscape into songs like "No Tears Left to Cry" and "Get Well Soon."

#96The album became another major success and eventually gave Ariana her first Grammy.

#97Then, shortly after the album arrived, another loss hit.

#98Mac Miller died.

#99Mac Miller had been there much earlier.

#100He was on "The Way," the song that helped establish Ariana as a singer on her own terms.

#101They were collaborators.

#102They were friends.

#103Later, they became a couple.

#104The relationship was not simple.

#105Ariana later spoke about years of worrying over Mac's substance use and trying to keep track of whether he was okay.

#106Eventually they broke up.

#107A few months later, Mac died.

#108Ariana did not respond by sitting down with a grand plan to turn the loss into a commercially successful album.

#109What happened next was much less organized.

#110Her friends gathered around her.

#111Tommy Brown was there.

#112Victoria Monét was there.

#113Her childhood friend Aaron Gross and other people close to her were around too.

#114Jungle City Studios was nearby.

#115They knew music was one of the places Ariana naturally went when she needed somewhere to put herself.

#116So they got her there.

#117At first, there was no big album strategy.

#118They were spending time together.

#119Talking.

#120Drinking.

#121Making things.

#122Tommy later described it almost like a group therapy session that happened to involve music.

#123Ariana later said she barely remembered parts of that period.

#124She was deeply sad.

#125She was drinking heavily.

#126And yet songs kept appearing.

#127Eventually the whiteboard in the studio began filling up with titles.

#128"Needy."

#129"NASA."

#130"7 Rings."

#131"Make Up."

#132And "thank u, next."

#133They had not entered the room with an album mapped out.

#134At some point, an album simply existed around them.

#135While "thank u, next" was being made, Ariana's real life was still changing.

#136Her engagement to Pete Davidson was changing.

#137The lyrics changed with it.

#138There was even a version of the song that imagined a future in which Ariana married Pete.

#139Then reality changed again.

#140So did the song.

#141At one point Ariana used the phrase "thank u, next" publicly online, and people immediately latched onto it.

#142The next morning, she wanted the song mixed and released.

#143There was almost no distance between what was happening in her life and the music reaching the public.

#144The song became Ariana's first No. 1 single in the United States.

#145Then "7 Rings" became another enormous hit.

#146At one point Ariana held the top three positions on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time, something no artist had done since the Beatles in 1964.

#147Her career looked almost impossibly under control.

#148Her private life was anything but.

#149Those two things were happening at the same time.

#150They were not the same thing.

#151In 2019, Ariana went on the Sweetener World Tour.

#152"Sweetener" had succeeded.

#153"Thank U, Next" had succeeded even more spectacularly.

#154From outside, this looked like one of the strongest periods of her career.

#155Inside it, Ariana was still trying to process what had happened to her.

#156She told fans that she was carrying a lot.

#157She wondered publicly whether touring was good for her health.

#158Every night, she was performing songs connected to wounds that still felt recent.

#159Then the tour reached Pittsburgh, Mac Miller's hometown.

#160During "thank u, next," Ariana reached the lyric that mentions Malcolm.

#161She could not get through it properly.

#162The audience sang the words for her.

#163In Manchester, Ariana had returned to sing for fans.

#164In Pittsburgh, fans sang the part Ariana could not sing for herself.

#165Success had not made grief disappear.

#166Being one of the biggest pop stars in the world had not solved the rest of being Ariana.

#167Then she moved away from pop-star Ariana for longer than she ever had before.

#168"Wicked" was not some random acting job Ariana picked up after becoming famous.

#169She had loved it since childhood.

#170When Ariana was around ten, her mother Joan took her to see the Broadway production.

#171Ariana got to go backstage.

#172She met Kristin Chenoweth, the original Glinda.

#173And one of Ariana's most vivid memories from that meeting was wonderfully unglamorous.

#174Kristin's dog peed on a couch.

#175Kristin and little Ariana cleaned it up together.

#176Kristin gave Ariana a wand and some shower gel.

#177Ariana later remembered using the shower gel in tiny amounts because she wanted it to last.

#178She also talked about wanting to play Glinda someday.

#179Roughly twenty years later, Ariana got the chance to audition for the role for real.

#180When Kristin asked which part she was going for, Ariana told her.

#181Glinda.

#182They both cried.

#183But by then Ariana had a new problem.

#184Being Ariana Grande had become almost too big.

#185Ariana went through multiple auditions for "Wicked."

#186She sang for hours.

#187She had to prove she could actually play the role.

#188Eventually she got it.

#189And her career flipped in an interesting way.

#190When she was young, Cat Valentine was so recognizable that Ariana had to show people there was a real singer behind the character.

#191Now Ariana Grande herself was the overwhelming identity.

#192The famous voice.

#193The No. 1 songs.

#194The ponytail.

#195The global celebrity.

#196To play Glinda, she had to make all of that recede.

#197The audience could not simply see Ariana Grande playing Glinda.

#198They had to see Glinda.

#199Kristin Chenoweth encouraged Ariana not to imitate her version of the character.

#200This was Ariana's turn.

#201She needed to make the role her own.

#202Ariana also formed a new working relationship with Cynthia Erivo.

#203The two made a conscious agreement to create space for each other, to communicate directly, and to look after one another through the enormous production.

#204Ariana later said that playing Glinda affected her personally.

#205Glinda possessed a kind of certainty and trust in her own instincts.

#206By inhabiting that every day, Ariana felt herself reconnecting with some of that confidence too.

#207When Ariana left for London to work on "Wicked," she was not simply taking a short break between pop projects.

#208She later said she thought she might never make another album.

#209For years, music had been the place she kept returning to.

#210Now she was stepping away from the machinery of being Ariana Grande the pop star.

#211She later described that distance as healing.

#212And then something unexpected happened.

#213Being away from her own music made her want it again.

#214Playing Glinda, reconnecting with self-trust, and living outside the normal pop cycle changed the way she related to her own creativity.

#215During a pause in "Wicked" production, Ariana started making music again with Max Martin.

#216It was not initially supposed to become a full album.

#217Then it did.

#218"Eternal Sunshine" arrived.

#219Earlier in her life, Ariana had often gone into music because something hurt.

#220This time, she had gone away from music for a long while and discovered that she actually wanted to return.

#221Ariana eventually returned to full-scale touring with the 2026 Eternal Sunshine Tour.

#222It was her first major tour since 2019.

#223And the way she described it sounded very different.

#224She said she was able to be much more present.

#225She could actually feel what was happening.

#226She called the experience healing.

#227Beautiful.

#228Even corrective.

#229That does not mean the tour cured whatever remained from Manchester.

#230Ariana never made that simple claim.

#231But the contrast between the two periods was clear.

#232In 2019, she was touring while talking openly about how raw the wounds still felt.

#233In 2026, she was talking about loving the experience again.

#234So the obvious next move would seem to be simple.

#235Keep going.

#236Ariana chose the opposite.

#237In August 2026, Ariana's team announced that after the Eternal Sunshine Tour, she planned to step back from public visibility and public-facing work for a while.

#238This was not a tiny social-media break.

#239She withdrew from a planned 2027 West End production of "Sunday in the Park With George" opposite Jonathan Bailey.

#240From the outside, the explanation seemed easy.

#241Years of scrutiny had finally exhausted her.

#242And public scrutiny really was part of the burden.

#243Ariana had spent years having strangers debate her appearance, her body, her relationships, and almost every visible change in her life.

#244But Ariana personally pushed back on the idea that the decision was some sudden collapse.

#245During a Chicago show, she told the audience that it was not reactive.

#246It was not impulsive.

#247She had quietly planned it long before.

#248People were allowed to need boundaries.

#249And at the same time, she was describing the tour as one of the best professional and creative experiences of her life.

#250She was not leaving because she hated the work.

#251She was not stopping because she could no longer do it.

#252She could keep going.

#253She was enjoying going.

#254And she had still decided where the stopping point would be.

#255On September 1, 2026, Ariana walked onto the stage at London's O2 Arena for the forty-first and final show of the Eternal Sunshine Tour.

#256She thanked the fans.

#257She cried.

#258Ariana had cried onstage before.

#259But this was not Pittsburgh in 2019.

#260Back then, she had been trying to sing songs tied to losses she was still struggling to process.

#261This time she had finished the tour.

#262She had loved it.

#263She was grateful for it.

#264And she was already preparing to enter a break she had chosen for herself.

#265Back in Manchester in 2017, the question had been whether Ariana could ever return to the stage after people were killed at one of her concerts.

#266She did return.

#267But returning was only the beginning.

#268The trauma remained.

#269More loss came.

#270She became more successful while feeling less stable.

#271She stepped away from pop.

#272She disappeared into someone else's character.

#273Then, unexpectedly, she wanted her own music again.

#274And almost a decade after Manchester, the question had changed.

#275It was no longer whether Ariana Grande could sing again.

#276It was whether someone who had finally learned to love singing onstage again could also decide when not to.

#277For most of Ariana's life, an open door seemed like something she had to walk through.

#278Broadway led to television.

#279Television led to the studio.

#280Manchester led back to Manchester.

#281Grief led back to the studio.

#282Even when touring hurt, she kept touring.

#283In 2026, another door was still open.

#284For once, Ariana Grande looked at it and decided:

#285not right now.

#286When Victoria Monét first met Ariana, she barely knew "Victorious"; she simply heard the red-haired teenager warming up and sent her "Honeymoon Avenue." Years later, she was still in the room for "Thank U, Next." How did one almost accidental studio connection survive every version of Ariana's career and become one of her longest creative partnerships?