​​Ariana Grande is happy, and it’s important to her that people know that. Still, it would be hard to miss her happiness on this sunny spring day at a ramshackle house in Beverly Hills. It beams out of her as she sprawls on the lawn, murmuring in baby talk to Toulouse, her rescue beagle-chihuahua【救援犬，比格犬，吉娃娃】, and it suffuses the way she vogues out of the house into the yard, spinning and twirling in a frilly gray tulle dress.

Ariana Grande是很开心的，对于她来讲，大家知道这件事很重要。尽管大家都觉得她很苦恼，但在这个晴朗春日里，没办法忽视她在封面拍摄地Beverly Hills的老房子那里度过的快乐时光。她在草地上“四仰八叉”地躺着，像小孩子说话一样对Toulouse轻声说着什么；她身穿灰色百褶纱裙，从屋子舞动到庭院，转着圈，手也在不安分地舞动着——她的喜悦在这些时刻迸发并且弥漫在空气中。

She has a lot of reasons to be happy. At 24, Grande is one of the biggest pop stars in the world, and she’s coming out with new music two years after her last album, the blockbuster Dangerous Woman. Her latest single is called “No Tears Left to Cry.” Going off the title, you’d expect a big torch ballad—she’s run out of tears! Instead, it’s a triumphant, ’90s-house-inflected pop confection, part breathy vocals and part spunky, spoken-word playfulness. She chose it carefully: “The intro is slow, and then it picks up（双关）,” she says. “And it’s about picking things up.”

她开心的理由很多——24岁的Grande 已经是世界上最负盛名的流行明星之一，在距离上一张轰动性的专辑 Dangerous Woman 发行两年后的今天，她带着崭新的音乐卷土重来。她的最新单曲叫做 No Tears Left To Cry .看到这个标题，你也许会把它想象成一首矫揉造作的情歌——她把眼泪都哭干了！然而，这是一首凯旋之歌，轻快的90年代浩室舞曲结合pop类型，带有一些气声唱腔，带着一些决心意味的 Spoken Word 的表演风格。她（对曲风）的选择十分谨慎：“前奏缓慢，紧接着开始加速”，她说，“这是一首和重新获得有关的歌曲”。

---

• ​Torch Song指矫情的婆婆妈妈的爱情情歌，比如单方面喜欢，感情关系破裂等等，比如My All —Mariah Carey和You're Beautiful—James Blunt。
• 90s-house：90年代House音乐，比如Be Alright—Ariana Grande。House音乐是二十世纪八十年代产生并流传至今的电子舞曲音乐分支。
• Spoken Word 是一种类似诗歌朗诵，口白的具有极大包容性的艺术形式 ，可以是传统诗歌体裁，也可以是Hip－pop，爵士诗歌，甚至可以用喜剧形式来表达。文章中的意思是，No Tears Left to Cry 这首歌的 Pickin up／Pickin up...唱法改变类似这种艺术形式。

---

Grande made a song about resilience because she has had to be resilient, in ways that are difficult to imagine, after a terrorist detonated a bomb outside her May 22, 2017, concert in Manchester, England, killing 22 people and leaving more than 500 injured. What happened is part of the song, but the song is not about what happened. Instead of being elegiac, it’s joyful and lush, and Grande is proud of it, and of herself. “When I started to take care of myself more, then came balance, and freedom, and joy,” she says. “It poured out into the music.” In the video for the song, she’s upside-down, the way life used to feel. “We’ve messed with the idea of not being able to find the ground （双关）again,” she says, “because I feel like I’m finally landing back on my feet now.”

Grande制作了一首关于重新振作的歌曲，因为她不得不重新振作，那种程度是难以想象的——在2017年5月22日，在她英国曼彻斯特的演唱会外，恐怖分子引爆了炸弹，22人因此丧生，500多人受伤。这一切的发生成就了这首歌，但是这首歌并不是在讲那些事——没有蒙上缅怀和悼念的色彩，而是充满欢快和希望。Grande对这首歌对她自己都很骄傲，“当我开始更多地在乎自我，平衡，自由和愉悦也随之而来了”，她说，“它（指的是自我意识）倾注在音乐里”。在这首歌的音乐录影带中，她是倒过来的，就像生活中常常感觉到的那样。 “我们常常觉得找不到事情的解决办法，没办法脚踩实地，其实我们混淆了概念”，她说，“因为我觉得最终支撑自己的是自己的脚，而不是大地。”

---

​

A妹首次登上时代杂志封面。

​

Grande is petite, with Kewpie-doll eyes and a wide, easy smile. She often wears her hair in a big ponytail, but today it is pulled back into an elaborate topknot, with little wisps of hair coming down behind her ears like a halo. When she talks, she is earnest and enthusiastic—you can hear her theater-kid roots.

Grande身材娇小，有一双丘比特娃娃一样的眼睛和大大的舒服的微笑。她经常梳着大马尾，但今天它被放进一个精致的顶髻里，几缕头发在耳朵后面自然垂下，像光环一样。她说话时恳切又热情 - 你可以听出她从小扎根在剧院中的与众不同。

---

• ​Kewpie-doll 美国制造的儿童洋娃娃，胖胖的头，满脸幸福，大眼睛卷发。名字来自爱神丘比特。过去，Kewpie doll往往被视为集会上小游戏的奖品。在1913年首次销售。

---

​Grande grew up in South Florida; her mom was the CEO of a communications company and her father a successful graphic designer. As a child, she always wanted to perform. “I loved wearing Halloween masks in June and doing stand-up in my kitchen for my grandparents,” she says. She was precocious and driven. “My friend from preschool found a notebook that we must have written when we were 5 or 6 years old that was like, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’” she says. “Mine said, ‘I want to be on Nickelodeon and then I want to sing.’”

Grande成长在佛罗里达州南部；她的妈妈是一家通讯公司的CEO，她的爸爸是一位成功的平面设计师。她还是孩子的时候，她总想着去表演。“那个时候我喜欢在六月带着万圣节面具，在外公外婆面前表演单口喜剧”，她说。她有点早熟又充满动力。“我在幼儿园的朋友找到了一个笔记本，当时本子上规定写我们五六岁时想成为的样子，‘你长大了想干什么？’”，她说。“在本子上我写的是，‘我想要登上尼克儿童频道然后唱歌’。”​

---

• Stand-up Comedy 是一种喜剧形式，类似于单口相声，重在互动，讲述幽默故事或者笑话。比如艾伦秀开场的独白。
•  Nickelodeon 指的是ABC旗下的儿童频道，面向2－17岁的青少年。相当于CCTV少儿频道。

---

​She performed in local theater, then on Broadway in the musical 13. When she was 16, she was cast on the Nickelodeon show Victorious, which made her a star, though mostly with younger viewers, and she dabbled in bubblegum pop. She signed with Republic Records after the label’s chairman saw videos of her covering Whitney Houston and Adele on YouTube.

Her first official single, “The Way,” was released in 2013. It didn’t sound like the music she had recorded for Nickelodeon; it was breezy, catchy throwback soul, and it showed off her towering voice, which at times sounds almost instrumental. (Even die-hard fans have pointed out that, depending on how Grande sings, it can be hard to make out her lyrics—a critique she clearly takes in stride. At one point during our interview, after finishing a winding thought, she turned to me and asked, “Did I enunciate?” and then flashed a mischievous smile.)

那时候她在当地剧院表演，后来去百老汇参演音乐剧 13 。在她十六岁的时候，她在尼克国际儿童频道的 胜利之歌 一剧中出演，虽然观众大多比她小，但是并不耽误她成为明星，而后开始涉足泡泡糖流行乐领域，在共和唱片的一位高层看到 Ariana 翻唱 Whitney Houston 和 Adele 的歌曲之后和她签约。

她的第一首官方单曲The Way 在2013年释出。这首歌和她曾经为儿童频道录制的歌曲的感觉完全不同——这是一种轻松愉快的复古灵魂乐，展现了她高亢的嗓音，甚至有时听上去像是乐器一样。（即便是死忠粉丝们也说，根据 Grande 的演唱方式，很难弄清她的歌词——她自己也大方接受批评。在我们的采访一幕中，她在表达了一个拗口的观点之后，她转身问我说：“我讲清了吗？”然后闪过一个邪魅的微笑。）

---

• ​Victorious，中文译名 胜利之歌。2013年3月在尼克儿童频道播出的情景喜剧，共有四季。两次获得美国儿童选择奖—Favorite TV Show（2012,2013）

• Bubblegum Pop，译为泡泡糖流行乐，是一种音乐类型，属于Pop音乐的分支，主要受众为青少年【pre-teens，teenagers】，比如 Put Your Hearts Up - Ariana Grande。

---

​

​Her first album, Yours Truly, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide, and her follow-ups, My Everything and Dangerous Woman, did even better. She released a string of chart-topping collaborations, including “Problem” (featuring Iggy Azalea), “Love Me Harder” (featuring the Weeknd) and “Side to Side” (featuring Nicki Minaj). She toured the world. Got labeled a diva, as happens to pretty much all women in music. Became the third most followed person on Instagram. It was a lot to handle, even though she had wanted success. “There was an adjustment period, because my life changed drastically,” she says. She has settled into it by now. “If I want to go out, then I’m going to go out as Ariana Grande and be O.K. with it,” she says. “If I’m feeling less O.K., I’ll probably stay in bed and watch Grey’s Anatomy.”

她的第一张专辑 Yours Truly 在Billboard 200上空降第一名，全球销量超过50万张，她的后续专辑 My Everything 和 Dangerous Woman 的表现甚至更为出色。她发布了一系列的位居榜单高位的合作曲，包括“Problem”（feat.Iggy Azalea），“Love Me Harder”（feat.The Weeknd）和“Side to Side”（feat. Nicki Minaj）。她开启了世界巡演；也被贴上了“DIVA”的标签——一件几乎发生在所有的女音乐人身上的事；成为Instagram上粉丝数排名第三的人。尽管如此，她想功成名就还是要处理很多事情。 “我有一段调整期，因为生活发生了巨大的变化”，她说。到目前为止她已经解决了这个问题。 “要是我想出去，我将以Ariana Grande的身份，我会适应这件事”，她说。 “假如我觉得不太行，那我可能会躺在床上看Grey's Anatomy。”

---

• Grey's Anatomy​，中文译名 实习医生格蕾，电视剧，由美国广播公司出品，到目前共播出十三季，第十四季正在播出。

---

​Everything was different, Grande says, when she was making her new album. First off, she took the lead on writing songs, which she had never really done before. “I was just so excited about singing,” she says of her previous efforts. “So I co-wrote, but I was never as involved.” She was also vocal with her producers—namely Max Martin, Savan Kotecha and Pharrell Williams, three of the most reliable hitmakers in music—about experimenting with her sound. “There was nothing I wouldn’t try,” she says. She told Williams she wanted to “make the weirdest thing we can first.” There are several moments on the record—both on the lead single and on an anthemic, sultry banger called “God Is a Woman”—in which Grande’s voice is layered so that it sounds like a choir, but really, it’s only her, multiplied. On another song, “Get Well Soon,” her vocals are interwoven in dense layers of sound, creating an otherworldly effect. “It’s like I’m talking to all of my thoughts in my head,” she says, “and they’re singing back to me.”

Grande说，当她制作新专辑时，一切都很新鲜。首先，她带头写歌——在此之前她从没真正做过这件事。 “唱歌让我感到非常兴奋”，她谈到她之前的努力。 “所以我和别人共同创作，我从来没有参与感”，她还与她的制作人—即Max Martin，Savan Kotecha和Pharrell Williams，三位最可靠的“热单制造机”——就她的声音进行实验。 “没有我不想尝试的，”她说。她告诉菲董，她想“我们率先做最奇怪的东西”。录音的时候中有几个特别的地方——首单和一首名为“God Is a Woman”的性感爆款热曲—Grande的声音被分为不同层次，所以听起来像合唱，但实际上，这只是她一个人声音的不同划分。在另一首歌曲“Get Well Soon”中，她的声音交织在密集的多层次音轨中，创造了一种超凡世外的效果。 “好像我在倾吐我脑袋里面的所有想法”，她说，“它们反过来向我歌唱。”

Grande credits this newfound creative freedom to the work she has done to heal herself. “I felt more inclined to tap into my feelings because I was spending more time with them,” she says. “I was talking about them more. I was in therapy more.” Although she had struggled with anxiety in the past, she says, “I never opened up about it, because I thought that was how life was supposed.” 

Grande把这些新发现的有创造性的解放归功于她为了疗愈自己所做的事情。“我更倾向于发掘我的感受，因为我和它们相处的时间更长”，她说。“我和它们交谈得越长，就会感觉自己被治愈得更多”。虽然曾经她深陷焦虑，“我对此从来没有大谈特谈过，是因为我觉得生活就应该这样。”

​Here’s what Scooter Braun, Grande’s manager, tells me about what happened last summer, after the terrorist attack in Manchester. Grande had flown home to stay at her grand-mother’s house in Boca Raton, Fla., and Braun met her there, where he asked her to do something that, he says, he knew at the time was unfair. “I said, ‘We need to get a concert and get back out there.’ She looked at me like I was insane. She said, ‘I can never sing these songs again. I can’t put on these outfits. Don’t put me in this position.’” They decided to cancel the rest of the tour.

以下这些发生在上个夏天的曼彻斯特的事，是Ariana的经纪人Scooter Braun向我讲述的。Grande当时已经乘飞机回到佛罗里达，Boca Raton的外婆家里，Braun在那里和她见了一面，想让她做一些事，他说，他知道当时的时间点对于Grande来说并不公平。“我说的是，我们应该会去开一场演唱会。她的眼神告诉我，她觉得我疯了。她说，‘我永远也不再会唱那些歌了，我没办法再次穿上那些表演的华丽服装。不要在这样的情况下逼我了’。”他们决定取消剩余的巡演。

Two days later, Braun was on a flight, and he landed to find 16 text messages from Grande saying, “Call me. I need to speak to you.” When they finally spoke, she said, “If I don’t do something, these people died in vain.” They decided to put on a concert in Manchester to benefit the families that were affected.

The minute they arrived, just days after the bombing, they set out to help. They went to the hospital and sat with survivors. They met with families of the deceased. As the concert loomed, they began to worry that people would be too afraid to show up.

两天之后，Braun当时在飞机上，当他着陆时发现了Grande的16条信息。“打电话给我。我有必要和你谈一下。”在他们的最后一次交谈时，她说，“我一定要做些什么，我绝不能让这些人白白地失去生命。”他们决定，在曼彻斯特开一场演唱会，去帮助那些在事件中受到波及的家庭。

他们到达曼城的那个时刻，正是爆炸发生的第二天，他们已经着手于这次慈善计划了。他们去医院和幸存者坐在一起，和逝者的家人见面。演唱会开始的日子越来越近了，他们又开始担心：人们会不会因为恐惧而不会来看演唱会呢？

​But more than 50,000 people turned out. A dozen other artists—including Justin Bieber, Coldplay and Katy Perry—flew in to perform. Grande closed the night with a performance of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” with tears streaming down her face. The show, called One Love Manchester, was broadcast live on British TV and streamed all over the world, alongside information about how to donate; it helped raise over $12 million for victims of the bombing and their families. The city of Manchester named Grande an honorary citizen, citing her “great many selfless acts and demonstrations of community spirit.”

然而演唱会的观众超过五万人，还有许多其他的艺人赶来表演，比如Justin Bieber, Coldplay 和 Katy Perry。Grande以一首Somewhere Over the Rainbow作为表演的尾声——她已经泪如泉涌。这场表演称作 One Love Manchester ,由英国电视台电视直播，全世界同步流媒体收听并附带着捐款方式，整场演唱会为爆炸中的受害者和他们的家庭筹得善款超过1200万美金。曼城授予Grande 荣誉市民的称号，称赞她“太多无私的善行和公共精神的最佳佐证。”

​

Ariana Grande被授予曼彻斯特荣誉市民

​“We put a lot on her shoulders,” Braun says. “And she took over. You know, for the rest of her life, she can say that she is exactly who she claims to be.”

So that’s what happened. After the Manchester show, Grande finished the tour. And then she went dark for a while.

“我们让她背负了太多”，Braun说，“而且她承担了这一切。你懂的，在今后的人生路上，她就是她口中的她，表里如一。”

所以那就是发生的一切。在曼城表演之后，Grande完成了巡演。在那之后，Grande很长一段时间没有出现在人们的视野里。

Grande had built a career on the fizzy, ebullient joy of music as escape: the spine-tingling voice, the thrilling live shows, the polished music videos. Now, even though she had nothing to do with the attack, she had become central to the narrative in a way that made it inexorable. And yet what had she really lost, compared with so many others? People had lost children, parents, partners, friends. To make art that was explicitly about it would look exploitative. But to ignore it would be disingenuous.

Grande的生涯开始于汽水气泡一样热情的音乐，算是和现实有一段距离：引人沉醉的嗓音，气氛高涨的现场表演，美轮美奂的音乐录影带。如今，即便和这场袭击的发生没有直接关系，她也以一种近乎残忍的方式成为了事件的舆论中心。但是和别人相比，她有没有失去什么呢？人们失去了孩子，父母，伴侣和朋友。完全按照现实进行艺术创作看上去消费过度——但是无视现实又不够诚恳。

​She knows I am going to ask her about this before I have even said the words. She can see it in my eyes, and I can see it in hers, and she begins to cry—not graceful tears, but deep, choking sobs. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll do my best.”

“在访问她之前这件事「指曼城事件」之前，她已经预料到我会访问这件事了。从彼此的眼神中我们心照不宣，紧接着她开始流泪——不是那种优雅的样子，而是发自内心深处的哽咽，'我真的很抱歉'，她说，'我会尽我全力的。' 

Slowly, she starts to elaborate: “There are so many people who have suffered such loss and pain.” Her own grief feels both enormous and insignificant. “The processing part is going to take forever,” she says, and sobs again. She doesn’t want to talk about the attack. “I don’t want to give it that much power,” she says. “Something so negative. It’s the absolute worst of humanity. That’s why I did my best to react the way I did. The last thing I would ever want is for my fans to see something like that happen and think it won.”

她慢慢地从悲伤中缓过来，开始讲述：“太多人经历了失去和痛苦。”她自己的悲伤在与日俱增的同时又显得如此微不足道。“这个过程将是无限期的”，她说着，再一次动容了。她并不愿提及这次袭击事件。“我不想把太多的精力放在上面”，她说。“有一些事是负面的。这完全和人性是背离的。这就是我尽最大所能做出回应的原因。我最不想的事就是我的粉丝目睹了这一切的发生，却认为我们取得了胜利。”

“Music is supposed to be the safest thing in the world,” she continues. “I think that’s why it’s still so heavy on my heart every single day.” She takes a deep breath. “I wish there was more that I could fix. You think with time it’ll become easier to talk about. Or you’ll make peace with it. But every day I wait for that peace to come and it’s still very painful.” There is no tidy resolution. There is no why. It just happened. Grande looks up at the sky. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “What was the question?”

“音乐应该是世界上最安全的事情”，她继续说，“这就是让我每一天都觉得沉重的原因。”她深深地呼吸。“我希望我可以补偿更多。你可能觉得随着时间的推移，谈论这件事不再那么困难，甚至会恢复平静。但是每一天我都在等待平静的来临，然而痛苦依然伴随着我。”没有条理分明的解决计划，没有来由——它就是这样发生了。Grande望向天空，“我很难过”，她又说了一次。“问题到底出在哪？”

The bee has been a symbol of Manchester for years; it’s a nod to the city’s hardworking citizens, the worker bees who built up the region during the Industrial Revolution. After the attack, thousands of people in Manchester got bee tattoos. So did Grande and members of her crew. Now she sees bees everywhere. There’s one at the very end of the video for “No Tears Left to Cry,” in the final frame, buzzing away.

蜜蜂是曼彻斯特多年以来的符号——它是对城市中勤奋工作者的肯定，在工业革命时期，他们像工蜂一样筑造了这里。在这次袭击过后，曼城数以千计的人用蜜蜂的图案纹身。在No Tears Left to Cry的MV最后一帧处也有一只蜜蜂，嗡嗡地飞向远方。

​It’s part of how she carries what happened in Manchester with her. She performed at the Charlottesville, Va., unity concert as well as the March For Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., and she met with some of the survivors of the Parkland, Fla., shooting. “They’re so young but so brilliant and so strong,” she says. “We had a lot to talk about with what we’ve both been through.”

​这就是她如何背负着曼城事件的一个片段。之后她在Charlottesville联合演唱会和华盛顿特区March For Our Lives运动演唱会上演唱，接着她去和佛罗里达州帕克兰得(Parkland)枪击事件中的幸存者见面。“他们如此年轻但是这样优秀又坚强”，她说，“我们都经历过所以我们有的聊。”

Ariana Grande在Charlottesville公益演唱会表演

​Her new album, Grande says, is called Sweetener. She decided to call it that because that’s the message she wanted to give to her fans: that you can take a bad situation and make it better. “When you’re handed a challenge,” she says, “instead of sitting there and complaining about it, why not try to make something beautiful?”

她的新专辑，Grande说，叫做Sweetener。她之所以决定叫这个名字，是因为这是她想向她的粉丝们传达的信息——你可以身处糟糕的境地但是可以让一切变好。“当你面临挑战”，她说，“与其坐以待毙满口抱怨，为什么不试着让一些东西变得美好一些？”

That sentiment hits home for Grande as well. “I’m happy,” she says, and tears spill out of her eyes again. She wipes them away. “I’m crying,” she says, “but I’m happy.”

此刻的Grande百感交集。“我很幸福”，她说着，眼泪又一次溢出了眼眶。她擦去眼泪。“我流泪了”，她说，“但是我很幸福”。

Ariana Grande on March For Our Lives

​

​​​​​