Ariana Grande is tired of defending her voice. The singer’s cadence and pitch has been dissected in close detail after a now-viral video saw her switch from a lower tone that some are saying is her “real voice” to a high-pitched voice, befitting her Wicked character, Glinda.
The singer addressed the drama with her friend, Evan Ross Katz, on his Shut Up Evan podcast on 9th July after he brought up the video. “There is a clip going viral right now from your recent interview on Pop Crushed – and the clip has you modulating between your lower register and your higher register,” he stated, “which is such a normal thing that people do, especially if you have a large range,” Ariana interjected.
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Evan explained they’d previously discussed the issue, noting: “this is something that you and I went back and forth about because you’re my friend, so I get very defensive when I see these conversations happening online, but one thing that I said to you privately was ‘we contain multitudes’ […] we don’t just have one voice. My friend texted me and he goes: ‘which one is the Ari you know?’ and I said ‘they both are. They’re both her voice’,” to which Ariana responded, exasperated, with: “I mean first of all, thank you, thank f*ck, oh my goodness.”
She continued: “Another thing that is really real is that I did just spend a long time playing a character [referring to Glinda] every single day, and training my voice to do different things, for a long time[…] The voice is in the body, it’s an instrument and muscle memory is a real thing. That’s kind of a normal thing, I think, for people who, it’s their job to transform.”
It’s not the first time Ariana’s had to defend herself, or even this clip in particular. At the time, Ariana commented under the video explaining: “habit (speaking like this for two years) and also vocal health. I intentionally change my vocal placement (high/low) often depending on how much singing I’m doing. I’ve always done this BYE.”