Ariana Grande attends the 13th annual Billboard Women in Music event at Pier 36, in New York. File/AP

Singer-songwriter Ariana Grande is making her return in 2024 with a new album, she confirmed with a series of social media posts. “See you next year,” Grande wrote in the caption to a carousel of Instagram photos and videos, reports Variety.

She tagged her producer Ilya Salmanzadeh, Republic Records and numerous others, and shared a variety of in-studio memories that vary in tone: a video of Grande’s mother dancing, a screenshot of a FaceTime call where she’s dancing, a photo of a warehouse (possibly a music video set?) and another photo shows her crying.

“The two moods of the album,” she wrote in her Instagram story. As per Variety, the Grammy winner also included a video taken by someone who notes that it is “almost the last day of this album.” “I’m so tired,” she says in the clip. “But so happy and grateful. I also feel like I weigh 3,000 tons. Fans also received a care package from Grande with a photo of her red-tinted lips and red lipstick from her R.E.M. Beauty line with a handwritten note that repeated, “See you next year.”

Aside from her entrepreneurial adventures, Grande has also had her hands full with her role in the upcoming ‘Wicked’ film, due in November. Grande began her music career at age 15 in the 2008 Broadway musical 13. She rose to fame for playing Cat Valentine in the Nickelodeon television series Victorious (2010 — 2013) and Sam & Cat (2013–2014). Grande signed with Republic Records in 2011 after label executives viewed YouTube videos of her covering songs.

Her 1950s doo-wop-influenced pop and R&B debut album, Yours Truly (2013), topped the US Billboard 200, while its lead single, “The Way”, reached the top ten of the US Billboard Hot 100. Grande’s voice and vocal performances on the album drew immediate comparisons to Mariah Carey. Grande continued to explore pop and R&B in her second and third studio albums, My Everything (2014) and Dangerous Woman (2016).

My Everything experimented with EDM and achieved global success with its singles “Problem”, “Break Free” and “Bang Bang”, while Dangerous Woman became her first of four consecutive number-one albums in the UK. Personal struggles influenced her trap-infused fourth and fifth studio albums, Sweetener (2018) and Thank U, Next (2019), both of which were critical and commercial successes.

Sweetener won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album, and Thank U, Next broke the record for the largest streaming week for a pop album and was nominated for Album of the Year. The singles “Thank U, Next”, “7 Rings”, and “Break Up with Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored” made Grande the first solo artist to hold the top three spots on the Hot 100 simultaneously and the first woman to succeed herself at the top of the UK Singles Chart.

Agencies