Ariana Grande is using her voice to speak out.
In an interview with Evan Ross Katz published on Tuesday, July 9, Grande once again defended her change in tone during a recent interview on the “Podcrushed” podcast in June. In a clip that went viral on social media, the singer appeared to switch from a low register to a higher register mid-conversation.
“I think it’s just a very normal thing that certain conversations are different tonally,” Grande told Katz for his Shut Up Evan newsletter. “If I’m feeling very bubbly, I’ll sound more bubbly. If I’m feeling more serious, I’m gonna sound more serious. I’m not the same all the time — no one is!”
Grande, 31, also reiterated comments she made last month that she changes her intonation to “preserve my vocal health.”
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The “Yes, And?” singer further pointed out that she was immersed in playing Glinda in the upcoming Wicked movie adaptation for two years, which also resulted in changes to how she sounds.
“Another thing that is very real is that I just spent a long time playing a character every single day and training my voice to do different things for a long time, even before leaving for London,” she said.
“The voice is in the body. It’s an instrument, and muscle memory is a real thing. If I slip in and out of mannerisms or tonal shifts that I trained myself to do every single day for two years, that’s kind of a normal thing,” she continued.
Grande went on to call out the attention her apparent change in voice has received compared to male actors who put on accents for movie roles.
“You see with male actors that after the fact, people are always like: ‘Oh, wow! How dedicated he is to his craft. The transformation! He’s a brilliant performer,’” said the star. “And if God forbid I sneeze like Glinda or make an intonation like her, then I’m crazy and ‘someone should check on her.’”
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“After I made that comment [about changing my vocal placement], I started thinking about the other ways in which this is normal, and not only normal but also: I had a job to do,” Grande continued.
She concluded, “It’s a strange thing to be under such a microscope and sometimes people don’t really know what that’s like, so it’s the weirdest thing. We all do that. We all acclimate, and we all have different modes.”
Grande previously tackled the speculation about switching up her vocal range in conversations via TikTok in June.
“I intentionally change my vocal placement (high/low) often depending on how much singing I’m doing,” the singer commented under a clip from her “Podcrushed” interview that one user captioned, “The Voice Change??”
“I’ve always done this BYE,” Grande added.
