In just one year pop princess Ariana Grande has moved up from
pre-show performer to headline act at the MTV Video Music Awards and the
21-year-old singer couldn't be more excited. "It's a dream. I mean last year I sang on the preshow and it just shows like how much has happened this year. It's absolutely insane the fact that I'm opening and last year I was just performing at the preshow. It's like the craziest thing in the world to me and I'm very excited, very excited," said Grande.
Grande is the first performer for the awards show, which will air live on Aug. 24 from the Forum in Inglewood, California.
She'll perform her chart-topping new single "Bang Bang," with Nicki Minaj and Jessie J.
"It was amazing. She is so great," said Grande of Minaj. "I met her at the video shoot with Jessie J and those two girls are so talented and like so much personality. I was a big fan of both of those like way ahead of any of this. So the whole thing has been so surreal and so great and I'm very excited to be able to do that with them."
Her sophomore album, "My Everything," arrives Aug. 25 at midnight, moments after the VMAs, where Grande is nominated for three moonmen.
It features the Iggy Azalea-assisted "Problem," which has sold 2.6 million tracks, and her another single, "Break Free," a rising radio hit.
"Well I think that people can expect to learn a little more about me," she said of the new album. "The rest of the album sits in a little bit more of a mature vocal placement. Like I feel like some of the songs sit in a lower part of my voice, which I'm very excited to showcase a little more. I didn't have much of that on my first album or in the first couple singles off the album. So I'm very excited for people to listen to the ballads and the other sort of mid-tempo songs on the album and get to hear another side of my voice as well as another side of me as a person. So I'm very excited."
Grande's latest work also boasts an eclectic group collaborators: The Weeknd, Childish Gambino and A$AP Ferg make appearances; EDM darlings David Guetta and Zedd work on tracks; and hitmakers like Max Martin, Benny Blanco, Ryan Tedder and Rodney Jerkins are also part of the lineup. There's a ballad written by One Direction's Harry Styles and she teamed with Big Sean for the track "Best Mistake.".....