Ariana Grande Discussed Her Changing Voice And "Persona"

Ariana Grande discussed her changing voice and persona in a new interview.

Compilations of Ariana's voice across the past decade and a half have previously gone viral, with some accusing the Wicked star of using a "blaccent" in the late '10s. Her voice in interviews has oscillated between a high pitch and a lower, raspier register, taking the latter in her Positions era.

Since her tenure on the Wicked set, which wrapped principal filming last month, Ariana's speaking voice has taken on a higher quality, slipping into what some commenters have called a "Transatlantic accent" at times.

In a new interview with Zach Sang, Ariana said that getting the role of Glinda in the upcoming movie musical was part of the apparent change. "I have never wanted something as badly as I did this," she began.

"I tried to use that to take lessons every single day while I was doing The Voice and get ready for these auditions," she continued, shouting out her acting and vocal coaches for training her.

She explained, "I trained every day with Nancy [Banks] and with Eric [Vetro] to transform my voice, even — like, my singing voice — everything about me, I had to deconstruct to prove to them I could handle taking on this other person."

"I had to completely erase popstar Ari, the person they know so well, because it's even harder to believe someone as someone else when you're so branded as one thing. I had to go all the way to strip that down, come into my callback with no makeup, my hair down, I looked like I was 11 years old," she said.

Earlier in the interview, Ariana said that the combination of taking a break from music and making Wicked caused her to reflect on her persona. "I think I learned so much from Glinda and through Glinda," she added. "It actually helped me heal a lot of my own personal weird stuff that I had with my relationship with music and being an artist and to that persona."

"I was able to come home and address it and change the things that weren't working, and fall in love with it again," she said, "Having so much time with a character instead of a caricature-ized version of myself, it was really nice."

She further emphasized that she used to be "popstar Ari" "90%" of the time — versus now, when she said she's "99% human Ari." She said, "Even when I'm writing and I'm singing and I'm performing, I'm still human Ari."

You can listen to the full interview here.