Grande Ariana - Ariana: the unauthorized biography

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

Michael OMara Books Limited

9 Lion Yard

Tremadoc Road

London SW4 7NQ

Copyright Michael OMara Books Limited 2017

All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78243-885-4 in hardback print format

ISBN: 978-1-78243-886-1 in ebook format

CONTENTS

T he sun was shining but events in the closing weeks of spring in 2017 shrouded Britain in darkness. There was no darker moment than the one in which a young man attacked Ariana Grandes Manchester concert, killing twenty-two people and injuring 250. Within days of the bombing, Ariana announced that she would stage a benefit concert back in Manchester. Preparations began for an event that it was hoped would heal the wounds of a nation.

Then, the evening before the concert to be staged at the Old Trafford cricket ground, terrorists struck once again, this time in London.

Yet Grande, the small girl with a big name, would not be cowed. She pressed ahead with the concert. Some 50,000 people attended the show, where the likes of Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Take That and Liam Gallagher performed. Then, Ariana took to the stage. Her set was to be the climax of the show, and the pinnacle of her set was her rendition of the classic show tune Over the Rainbow.

Ariana looked so small on the stage, which stretched in front of the vast audience. She sung the song beautifully, despite the almost throttling emotion of the moment. Yet near its end, her emotions bubbled over and she stood holding a hand to her face, her famous hair caught up in her fingers. In the audience, too, feelings began to run higher than ever as fans, some of whom had been at the fateful first concert, broke down in tears. The musicians stopped playing as Ariana composed herself and the audience roared its encouragement. Then she began to sing again, nailing the songs big climax and blowing a kiss to the audience. Despite her small stature she stands at a little over five feet tall she had been a giant on the night. There is a concept in Kabbalah, Arianas spiritual belief system, known as tikkun olam. It means an act that helps put back together the shattered parts of the universe. Ariana had performed a model act of tikkun olam and become a global hero.

Or, as a writer for the respected and sombre business news website Bloomberg put it: Ariana was the leader of the free world for a day.

Over the Rainbow, which connects with peoples hopes and dreams and their yearning for a place where the troubles of the world magically disappear, was a fine choice for the big moment and it held extra significance for Ariana. As a child, she loved the music of Judy Garland, who originally sang it in the movie of The Wizard of Oz. Ariana also appeared in a stage production of Oz as a kid in Florida, so to sing it on the biggest stage, to a global audience, made the choice of song all the more significant.

Those productions came as a welcome distraction for her, an escape from a sometimes testing childhood. Yet even as she trod the boards of the local youth theatre, she could never have imagined that she would eventually sing Garlands big ballad in such charged circumstances. When the moment came, the whole world was watching, and Ariana captured it perfectly.

S ometimes, parents spot very early on the direction their childs life will take. Little hints and signals begin to show themselves here and there; eventually they begin to form a trend that snowballs, and points to a possible future. But in the earliest years of Ariana Grandes life, her mother, Joan, was not wondering if her daughter would take a musical path. Instead, she feared her little girl was set for a darker direction.

As for Ariana, she knew just how her mother felt. There was a stage, when I was three or four, where my mom thought I might grow up to be a serial killer, she joked in Billboard of her earliest years. Although the pop princess was exaggerating for comic effect, as is her wont in so many interviews, her description of her childhood interests as dark and deranged has a hint of truth.

Looking back, she remembers how she enjoyed painting her face to make herself look like a skeleton. She would also often be seen wearing a Freddy Krueger mask, the serial killer from A Nightmare on Elm Street from the 1980s, who used his razor-bearing glove to kill people. Kruegers burned, disfigured face, his stripy jumper, brown fedora hat and trademark metal-clawed hand terrified audiences who saw the strictly adult-rated film. His murderous antics were not ones that many little girls were meant to see.

It was a gory and grown-up movie for Ariana to take to, but she has always had a taste for the scarier pictures. For instance, from her early years she loved Jaws and Jurassic Park. Directed by Steven Spielberg, Jaws was one of the biggest hit films of the 1970s, but not one that was intended for young eyes. A gripping movie, it features a huge man-eating shark that terrifies beach-goers in New England, USA. Its soundtrack has become synonymous with suspense and terror. Indeed, more squeamish adults struggled to stay the course of the movie because of the level of tension, and many who watched the film found themselves too scared to swim in the sea for years afterwards. Young Ariana, however, showed steel beyond her years in being able to stomach it.

Her other childhood favourite, Jurassic Park, was released in the year of her birth and is a less sinister film yet still graphic in its own way. Again directed by Spielberg, this 1993 flick was set in a vast park inhabited by dinosaurs that had been cloned from ancient DNA. Although Jurassic Park is a more family-friendly film than Jaws, neither were made with younger children in mind. That Ariana watched and enjoyed them suggests she was a discerning viewer and knew what she liked, even in her early years, and that in some senses, at least, she was not on the most restrictive of parental leashes.

Her parents were indeed liberal when it came to Arianas exposure to adult culture. Even family outings sometimes saw Ariana take in some grown-up art. When I was seven years old, my mom took me to see Rocky Horror, she told Time magazine. Thats just how my family is. Were just this Italian family that loves slightly raunchy humor.

The family were well off and based in the upwardly mobile Les Jardins area of Boca Raton, a Floridian coastal town. Ariana remembers the house as a perfect home to grow up in. She added that she would always have so many positive memories of it personally and professionally, from our annual Christmas Eve party and family reunions, to a great pool party we hosted when I graduated middle school.

Although Ariana describes her family as simply Italian, her ancestors come from a wider and more varied background than some fans and, indeed, Ariana realized. According to an ancestry website, her father Edwards parents were Anthony Vincent Charles Butera (son of Charles A. Butera and Marie) and Florence P. Citrano. Charles is recorded to have been born in New Jersey to Italian parents Antonino Butera and Margherita Azzara, who were from Menfi, Provincia di Agrigento, Sicily. While some have assumed Ariana is Latino, and she herself has stated on Twitter, in response to a fans question about her background, that I am Italian American, half Sicilian and half Abruzzese Sicily and Abruzzo both being regions in Italy Ariana is not an Italian pure-bred.