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.".....
"Sean has been very helpful to me from the beginning musically because he's known me since I was like 18 and I started off doing all this really bubblegum stuff and he was even encouraging my music way back even when making music that today I'm not necessarily as proud of. So he's always been a huge supporter and I always learn a lot while working with him," Grande said.
And when she's not working on music or prepping for performances Grande is glued to the television. Her brother Frankie J. Grande is competing on CBS' "Big Brother" and she loves tweeting about the episodes and has even appeared in the studio audience.
"It's been so stressful. Mainly because there are so many people saying terrible things about him and it's such a shady game and it's such a terrible way for people to like get to know you I guess as a person because it is a conniving like lie, cheat, steal kind of game. It's a game, the whole thing, and it's so crazy. But I'm really proud of him for coming clean about who he is and what he does for a living and what his family is like and things like that because I think that honestly was ruining his game and it made him come off in a way that was very not Frankie. It wasn't him and I love watching him now and I can't wait to see him and I just want to hug him. When he won that BOB competition all by himself I was on the floor. I was literally on the floor sobbing. So I'm very proud of him and I think that was very big of him to come clean like that and I think that he made the right move," she said.
Grande was the star of the Nickelodeon sitcoms "Victorious" and "Sam & Cat." Her 2013 debut single was the Top 10 hit "The Way."