Ariana Grande, a 22-year-old music-industry sensation who can perhaps lay the truest claim to Britney Spears’s pop princess tiara (spun from pure sugar, of course, with just a slight “sex worker” vibe), has touched down in London to whip up interest in her new album. Her last one pumped out so many candyfloss hits (Problem, Break Free, Bang Bang), that the record biz is taking the release of her latest, Dangerous Woman, later this month very seriously indeed. Journalists have been invited to a special “listening party”, hosted by Grande herself, where — over champagne and cupcakes at a hotel suite in central London — she will man the laptop while giving us giggly intros to all her new ditties and swishing her trademark high ponytail.
Naturally, the 13-year-old girl in me is profoundly psyched by this invitation, even if my cynical old hack’s brain isn’t buying it. Typically, artists at Grande’s level (69m Instagram followers, last album No 1 on the iTunes chart in 85 countries) only throw tea parties for people they don’t know if there are rumours to quash. And — praise be to the gossip gods — rumours there are. Plenty of them, with a couple that are truly weird. On top of a slew of reports that the 5ft popsicle is Bardot-level obsessed with her seven rescue dogs, won’t answer questions about her beloved dead grandfather or Mariah Carey (they share a dog whistle top register), and has her security delete unflattering selfies from her fans’ phones, the oddest moment for the former Nickelodeon child star came last summer. Grande was caught on CCTV making out with her spunky backing-dancer boyfriend, Ricky Alvarez, in a California doughnut shop (fair enough), before blanching as a tray of the calorific pastries were laid out in front of her and uttering the immortal line: “What the f*** is that? I hate Americans. I hate America.” Then she licked a few for good measure. Understandably, she is now dogged by the tag that she is “difficult” — or, the sexist modern equivalent, “a diva”.
So today, it’s damage control “cute mode” for the third most-followed person on Instagram, who is so adored that pre-orders of her single Problem put it top of the iTunes chart in 47 countries before it was even released. But bounding into the room in a 1990s-style Ralph Lauren sports sweater and jeans, with reading glasses propped on her head and flawless eyeliner, she appears endearingly blind for such a tender-aged megastar as she squints at the laptop. I swear the reason she spins her ponytail around so much is because she’s using it as a navigational device. Her banter is decent, though. “We can all use the term ‘dick bicycle’ now,” she deadpans, after spinning Side to Side, a new reggae-infused track on which Nicki Minaj chants those lyrics. “That’s a thing now, thanks to Nicki.” As promo pitches go, it’s not bad.
I am tucked in a quiet corner next to the beanie-hatted Alvarez, and get the only view of Grande snapping into sex mode, slinking up to him and mouthing the words to another new track: “Ain’t you ever seen a princess be a bad bitch?” Ooh, mama, I marvel, as the rest of the hacks file out, and I’m ushered to a backroom for some one-on-one time with “Ari”.
So, which is the young Italian-American from Florida: a winsome popstrel or a carnal mega-cow? Parents of her younger fans might be especially interested in the answer, given that her new album is even saltier than the last (“A little less conversation, a little more touch my body”). Thanks to the mix of her Nickelodeon past and current penchant for leather fetishwear (on the cover of Dangerous Woman she is dressed like a Playboy Bunny who found life at the mansion too vanilla), Grande gets slut-shamed more than most. She loathes it, rightly so, and launches straight in. “Are you a good girl or a bad girl?” she asks herself. “No! I’m a good girl, I’m a bad girl, I’m innocent, I’m sexy, I’m smart, I’m funny — I’m everything. Whatever I feel like wearing that day, it doesn’t define me. It defines what mood I’m in. That applies to all women,” she says.
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It’s a more sophisticated stance than Britney ever took. “Women can be anything,” she says. We’re sitting by a window a few storeys above the London traffic. Ironically, up close and wearing old jeans, Grande appears more like a grown-up than she does in all those baby-hooker ensembles from her videos. She also talks like an adult, albeit one who has had people fetching her coffee since the age of 13.
Born in 1993 (gulp) in Boca Raton — the hot, wet Florida city that backs onto the Everglades (these days she lives in LA) — Grande knew she wanted stardom when, aged four, her mother took her to a Celine Dion concert. Presumably during a bone-shaking encore of My Heart Will Go On, her unsuspecting mother exclaimed, “Could you ever imagine doing such a thing?”, to which little Ariana — weaned on a diet of show tunes and TV talent competitions — casually replied, “Yeah”, and that was that.
It helped that she could really sing. By the age of 8, she was on TV, performing the national anthem at ice-hockey games, and by 9 — inspired by her drama-loving elder brother, Frankie — was the star of her local community theatre. Around that time, her parents, Joan and Edward, who ran successful security and graphic-design businesses respectively, split up.
So far, so normal. A kid with talent, a musical-loving gay sibling and parents on the slide are the perfect conditions for producing showbiz dreams. But two things separated Grande from all the other dreamers. The first was her family. “Being brought up in an Italian-American family, you’re a natural tough cookie. Swearing and gambling. Very protective,” she says. Her sassy grandmother Marjorie “Nonna” Grande is a favourite with her granddaughter’s Insta following, and even accompanied her to the American Music Awards, where the internet decided she stole the show. Grande laughs when her name is mentioned, and says: “How you’re raised plays a huge part in how you survive in this industry. Or how long you can survive.”
Her second skill is an almost crafty level of charm. Were you a well-behaved child, I ask. “Yes. I believe I was, though when I was in preschool, I was always sent to the principal’s office for kissing boys,” she says, laughing. Really? “Yeah, in the playground. But it got to the point where as soon as I got to the principal’s office, he’d just hand me a bag of M&Ms.”
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Precocious barely covers it. For example, though Grande was raised a Catholic, at 11, she had a change of heart. “When they built the Kabbalah centre in Boca, my brother and I checked it out. As a gay man, my brother was feeling hurt by the Pope [Benedict XVI], so I went with him for support. I was really young,” she says, slightly incredulous of herself, “but the book I was reading was called The Way and it helped me decide that spirituality was important to me.” Well, at least the Scientologists didn’t find her, though I suspect she’s too canny for that.
She was cast in her first Broadway musical at 13, then headed to Los Angeles to see about a record deal. What’s curious, if also a tad creepy, is how long the music industry gestates young talent. It was deemed that her soaring voice was best suited to R&B pop, but at 14 she was too young to look “credible” (read “sexy”) performing it. Her manager advised her to audition for sitcoms while she waited, and she was almost instantly cast in the Nickelodeon hit Victorious. She has hardly stopped since, as she gets bored after one day off, a fact that put paid to her relationship with the rapper Big Sean last year. (It probably helps that her new hottie is on the payroll.) “It’s in our blood,” she says. “I don’t know if I’m a workaholic or if it’s obsessive, but it’s one or the other. Or both.”
Hmm. I’m not sure being a pop star sounds that fun, actually. Previously, she has forbidden journalists from asking about her adored maternal grandfather, Frank, “the most influential person in my life”, but out of nowhere she starts gabbling. “My grandpa always told me I had to do things. I remember when he was very, very sick — he was actually passing away — and I had made a commitment to do the Today show in the morning. I was like, ‘Grandpa, I’m staying here with you. I’m going to be here.’ And he said, ‘No, you’re going to go.’ That’s going to haunt me for ever. Now I have to do everything,” she says, with a gentle laugh.
Whether this is her motivation or her excuse, Grande’s drive is extraordinary, especially given all the online hate she gets. She doesn’t come across as a fully grown woman yet, so there can be something uncomfortable about her saucier moments. But this “daring” nascent womanhood is why the kids love her. They call themselves the Arianators and wait daily for news of a rumoured tour — and who knows what the costumes for that will be like? I once saw her perform Bang Bang in a skirt so short it failed to reach the lower half of her knickers. But perhaps all this commentary is sexist, especially the diva stuff? “It comes with being a woman in the industry. I think it’s gone away as I’ve shown people who I am and let them see my personality more and more.”
Has it, though? I read sexuality isn’t something you’re always comfortable doing on stage, I tease. Yet…
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At this, she looks highly amused and shoots me a grown-up look over the top of her glasses. “That,” she concludes, “was a long time ago.”
Ariana Grande’s new album, Dangerous Woman, is out on May 20 on Universal Island records