Pharrell Williams 'forced' Ariana Grande to write about bombing

Ariana Grande accepts her award for best pop video for "No Tears Left to Cry" onstage at the MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall on Monday, Aug. 20, 2018, in New York. Picture: AP

Ariana Grande accepts her award for best pop video for "No Tears Left to Cry" onstage at the MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall on Monday, Aug. 20, 2018, in New York. Picture: AP

Published Aug 24, 2018

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Ariana Grande has admitted Pharrell Williams pushed her to write about the bombing in Manchester when she returned from tour.

The 25-year-old singer was left devastated last May when a suicide bomber unleashed an explosion shortly after her concert at the Manchester Arena - killing 23 people, including children, and injuring 139 - but, although her anxiety was through the roof afterwards, the 'Happy' hitmaker encouraged her to pen 'Get Well Soon' as a tribute to the victims. 

Speaking to Paper magazine, she said: "Overall, [Pharrell] kind of forced it out of me because I was in a really bad place mentally. I've always had anxiety, I've had anxiety for years. But when I got home from tour it reached a very different, intense peak.

"[Pharrell] was like, 'You have to write about it. You need to make this into music and get this sh*t out, and I promise it will heal you.' And it definitely helped."

Ariana's new album 'Sweetener' also features a love song she penned for her fiance Pete Davidson, whom she got engaged to in June after a few weeks of dating, and she has admitted she wrote the track just a week after they started getting to know one another.

She said recently: "'Pete Davidson' is obviously inspired by my fiancé, I wrote this song like a week after we started hanging out. Sometimes when you feel a certain way about something and you can't express it with words as well as you can with music, then I sent it to him. I want this song to live forever as music lives forever."

The LP also contains a collaboration with her "big sister" Nicki Minaj.

She explained: "So 'The Light is Coming' features Nicki Minaj who is my big sister and one of my best friends that I've met through this industry. I love the message behind it, it's about people who can be so close minded or to blind-sided by their own opinion to find the truth."

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