Annie Leibovitz/VogueAriana Grande graces the cover of the August issue of Vogue, and inside, she explains why she decided to tour, despite the obvious emotional pain it’s been causing her.
“I was researching healing and PTSD and…and everyone was like, ‘You need…a schedule,’” Ariana tells Vogue. “Of course, because I’m an extremist, I’m like, ‘O.K., I’ll go on tour!’ But it’s hard to sing songs that are about wounds that are so fresh.”
“It’s fun, it’s pop music, and I’m not trying to make it sound like anything that it’s not,” she adds. “But these songs to me really do represent some heavy s**t.”
One thing they represent is the loss of her ex-boyfriend, Mac Miller, who died of an overdose last year. Of her grief, Ari tells Vogue, “It’s pretty all-consuming. By no means was what we had perfect, but…He was the best person ever, and he didn’t deserve the demons he had.”
After Miller died, Ariana made her Thank U, Next album, but she admits to Vogue, “I don’t remember those months of my life because I was (a) so drunk and (b) so sad.”
“I don’t really remember how it started or how it finished, or how all of a sudden there were 10 songs on the board,” she reveals.
But, she notes, “This is the first album…where I’m realizing that I can no longer put off spending time with myself.”
“I’ve been boo’d up my entire adult life. I’ve always had someone to say goodnight to,” she adds. “So Thank U, Next was this moment of self-realization…this scary moment of ‘Wow, you have to face all this stuff now…You have to heal all this s**t.’”
The August issue of Vogue hits newsstands July 23. The mag’s also posted Ariana’s new video for “In My Head” online.
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