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the world, it’s unifying. It’s a reminder
that music can be our greatest healer.”
She released no original music un-
til the following spring, when “No
Tears Left to Cry,” the first single off
her fourth studio album, Sweetener,
offered up a dance-floor hymn to op-
timism in the face of catastrophe. (The
album’s closing track, “Get Well Soon,”
addresses Manchester’s survivors di-
rectly. Including a period of silence at
the song’s end, it clocks in at 5:22, the
date of the bombing.) But in Novem-
ber 2018, after Miller’s death and the
dissolution of her brief engagement
to the Saturday Night Live comic Pete
Davidson, Grande had to acknowledge
that she was far from cried out, and she
did so in a now-famous tweet: “remem-
ber when i was like hey i have no tears
left to cry and the universe was like
HAAAAAAAAA bitch u thought.”
These words, classic darkly humor-
ous and self-deprecating Grande, are
about as far as she has been willing to
go toward addressing the events of the
last two years. “I’ve been open in my
art and open in my DMs and my con-
versations with my fans directly, and
I want to be there for them, so I share
things that I think they’ll find comfort
in knowing that I go through as well,”
she explains. “But also there are a lot
of things that I swallow on a daily basis
that I don’t want to share with them,
because they’re mine. But they know
that. They can literally see it in my eyes.
They know when I’m disconnected,
when I’m happy, when I’m tired.
It’s this weird thing we have. We’re
like fucking E.T. and Elliott.” Grande
admits to approaching our conver-
sation with a mix of dread and guilt
about her dread. “I’m a person who’s
been through a lot and doesn’t know
what to say about any of it to myself,
let alone the world. I see myself onstage
as this perfectly polished, great-at-my-
job entertainer, and then in situations
like this I’m just this little basket-case
puddle of figuring it out.” She laughs
through her sniffles. “I have to be
the luckiest girl in the world, and the
unluckiest, for sure. I’m walking this
fine line between healing myself and
not letting the things that I’ve gone
through be picked at before I’m ready,
and also celebrating the beautiful
things that have happened in my life
and not feeling scared that they’ll be
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