Ariana Grande: New album “Sweetener” has “chunks of my soul in it”

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The FADER/Jason NocitoAriana Grande says her upcoming new album Sweetener is a collection of songs you can both dance and cry to — maybe at the same time.

In a new cover story for The FADER’s summer music issue, Ariana reveals more details about the album, which was produced half by Pharrell Williams, before the Manchester Arena bombing, and half by Max Martin post-Manchester.

“I’ve always just been like a shiny, singing, 5-6-7-8, sexy-dance…sexy thing,” Ariana says. “But now it’s like, ‘OK … [it’s] a bop — but [it’s] a message. [It’s] a bop but also has chunks of my soul in it. Here you go…’ There’s definitely some crying-on-the-dancefloor stuff on this one.”  

She admits she shed some tears more than a few times during writing sessions for this album, and turned in some of her most vulnerable work yet.  In fact, Ariana says she even went back and re-added five songs the disc, after initially rejecting them as “too emotionally honest.”  Ultimately, though, she decided her fans deserved to hear them.

“There are parts of my life that they would love to know about,” she says, “and hard times that I have been dealing with for the past year-and-a-half that they deserve to know about because they love me endlessly and care.”

“I don’t want to hide any pain from them because I can relate to their pain,” she adds. “Why not be in it together?”

Sweetener, which also features a Nicki Minaj collab called “The Light Is Coming” and a Missy Elliot guest appearance on a track called “Borderline,” will be released this summer.

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