Victoria Monét On Ariana Grande, "All-Female Energy" Songwriting and Embracing Her Sexuality

During the month of June, Teen Vogue is celebrating rising music stars who transcend genres. Through in-depth profiles, we're highlighting artists who make songs our readers should know and will love.

Name: Victoria Monét

Age: 26

Hometown: Sacramento, CA

If Victoria Monét had to describe the past year of her life, she’d call it “a tornado of things.” That description seems pretty apt for one of this decade's most influential pop songwriters — one who has continued to build her solo career even as she churns out hit after hit for other artists.

In the past eight months alone, she co-wrote two No. 1 songs (Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings” and “Thank u, next”) and released her first Billboard Hot 100-charting hit “Monopoly”. Meanwhile, she’s continued to work on her own music, telling Teen Vogue that she has an album’s worth of songs already chosen that she plans on “micro-dosing” over the course of multiple EPs. The first release will likely be out by midsummer.

“I'm going to have to stop,” she laughs. “I need to be cut off, because I keep going back and making changes and trying to beat this song, to make sure that it's perfect, or if not necessarily perfect, then really sonically pleasing.”

As one of her best friends and frequent collaborators Ariana has proven over the past year, the traditional album cycle is a thing of the past. Victoria has a keen awareness of how the Internet works with music, and how many artists can’t afford to only release music once a year or every two years. “No one really has the patience for that because there's so much going on, on the web,” she says. “It's like, 'If you don't have music out, we're going to listen to the next thing in and be entertained anyway.'”

That fleeting reality about pop music trends has fueled her career well up to this point. She has four successful solo EPs to her name, but she started out writing songs and getting into music production as a teenager, before moving to Los Angeles and being signed to Motown as part of a girl group. When the group was dropped from the label, she moved full-throttle into songwriting, penning hits for Fifth Harmony, T.I., and of course, Ariana — she’s credited on nearly 30 Ariana songs at this point and has also toured with her. The two are vocal on social media about their strong friendship.

Their friendship has, in turn, influenced the kind of music they make together. “Thank u, next” and “7 Rings” are both in some part odes to their ever-growing friend group, which includes fellow songwriters Tayla Parx and Njomza as well as Ari’s childhood friends Courtney Chipolone and Alexa Luria.

Victoria thinks back on the songwriting process for “7 Rings” with fondness. “I was really excited when we were writing the song to have all-female energy,” she says. “[You were] able to do whatever it is you want. I think that's a really cool sentiment for all women writers… and there's also champagne, of course, so it’s a bit of a sleepover.”

She cares a lot about creating that positive energy in a studio setting, whether it’s with Ariana or other songwriters she’s working with or her own studio time. Her main advice is to “drop all ego and submit yourself to the betterment of the song versus the betterment of your name.” But not all of her experiences working with other artists have been as pleasant and conducive to good work.

“I'm not going to say any names, but one [artist I looked up to] did make me feel 'less than,’” she says. “You say you’re inspired by their work, and then that energy is just not reciprocated and it just seems like they can be on a high horse. I want to make sure no one ever feels that energy from me. I want everyone to feel like I'm looking them in the eye, I'm hearing what they're saying, I value their opinion because I do.”

Now that Victoria is focused on her solo work, she’s getting to explore new parts of her personal life. In November, Victoria came out on Twitter, writing, “I want everyone to know that I’m single… I also like girls. Thank U, Next. Bye.”

She says the experience of tweeting about liking girls “just dropped the weight off of my shoulders literally.” She adds, “I know that social media's said to be a really dangerous place, and it is. But that day I felt really safe and definitely supported, and just kind of free.” In her forthcoming music, she’s embracing her sexuality in her lyrics in a new way, and it’s changed her songs “100 percent.”

“In order to talk about what I really want to talk about, people have to know that my sexuality is a part of that,” Victoria says. “One of my goals with this new music is to take away more of the power from music that men make.”

For her, that starts with honesty: “Let's have a Red Table Talk via music.”

Let us slide into your DMs. Sign up for the Teen Vogue daily email.

Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Maggie Rogers on Calling Her Own Shots, Her Respect for Billie Eilish, and What Comes After "Heard It in a Past Life"

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue