Ariana Grande Covers ‘Marie Claire’, Talks Writing Overly Sexual Song “Higher” At Age 14

Last year, Ariana Grande launched her pop-R&B sound with her Mac Miller pair-up “The Way,” which wound up becoming the first of what would become her string of  several catchy Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. The onetime Nickelodeon star was 20 at the time, but as she reveals in the October issue of Marie Claire, she was personally ready to cut an album of R&B tracks — ones, it seems, with a mature slant — years prior to that.

“I was 14 years old and ready to make an R&B album,” Grande says in her cover feature. “I was like, ‘Where is that Mary J. Blige collab? Where is that Natasha Bedingfield writing session? Where is my session with India.Arie? I’m ready. Let’s go.’ I wrote this song called ‘Higher,’ and the lyrics were too sexual, too mature. And my mom was like, ‘This is a great song, but damn, you’re too young for this.'”

And speaking of “The Way,” Grande had the following to say about launching herself as a woman singing pop songs versus the innocence of her TV characters:

“I was like, ‘Guys, there has to be a really distinct difference between me and my character.’ And we did that with ‘The Way.’ I dyed my hair back to brown. I made out with a rapper in the video. I made the point I wanted to make. And I was excited to do so after so many years of pretending to be somebody else in front of a lot of people.”

Catch another photo from Ariana’s Marie Claire cover shoot below.

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