Copyright BuzzFeed
Ariana Grande’s So-Called “New Accent” Is Going Mega Viral, And Loads Of People Think She Now Sounds Like This A-List Celeb “It’s kind of impressive how many variations of her there are at this point.” As weird as it might sound, Ariana Grande’s voice has long been a hot topic on the internet. Over the past decade, several people have accused Ariana of speaking in noticeably different pitches and, at times, putting on a “Blaccent.” Back in 2013, the singer explained in an interview, “I’ve been speaking in a slightly higher placement than I usually speak in because I've been doing a lot of interviews, and I’m trying to keep my voice healthy.” Fast forward to the Wicked press tour last year, and Ariana explained how landing the role of Glinda had partly contributed to her apparent change in voice. “I have never wanted something as badly as I did this,” she said in Feb. 2024. “I tried to use that to take lessons every single day while I was doing The Voice and get ready for these auditions. I trained every day… to transform my voice, even — like, my singing voice — everything about me, I had to deconstruct to prove to them I could handle taking on this other person.” “I had to completely erase pop star Ari, the person they know so well, because it's even harder to believe someone as someone else when you're so branded as one thing,” she added. Ariana’s voice amid the Wicked press tour continued to garner attention online, and in June 2024, she directly commented on a TikTok video about it. “habit (speaking like this for two years) and also vocal health :) 🍵 i intentionally change my vocal placement (high / low) often depending on how much singing i’m doing 😭 i’ve always done this BYE,” she wrote under the footage of her voice completely changing mid-interview. A few months later, Ari’s now-viral Lie Detector video with her Wicked costar Cynthia Erivo inadvertently fueled the discourse around her voice change, with many people accusing her of putting on a transatlantic accent — aka an elegant blend of American and British pronunciations. Ari wound up addressing the subject again, telling Vanity Fair, “There is a part of the world that isn’t familiar with what it takes to transform your voice, whether it’s singing or taking on a different dialect for a role or doing a character voice for something…When it’s a male actor that does it, it’s acclaimed. There are definitely jokes that are made as well, but it’s always after being led with praise: ‘Oh, wow, he was so lost in the role.’ And that’s just a part of the job, really.” Now, some internet users are convinced that Ari’s voice has switched up once again. A viral post shared on X this week read, “wake up, new Ariana accent just dropped,” next to a clip of the star speaking on WICKED: The Official Podcast. In the clip, Ari says of the upcoming Wicked sequel, “I feel so grateful. I feel so excited…This second half has been a huge secret to all of us for years now, and yet the first part was happening at the same time as the second part. So for us, they’re intertwined irrevocably — one doesn’t exist without the other.” Immediately, several people suggested that Ariana sounded totally different, with some even arguing that she sounded like fellow celeb Selena Gomez. “It’s kind of impressive how many variations of her there are at this point,” one tweet read. “My girl is evolving like a pokemon,” said another. “This is the third accent this month alone. We need someone to keep track at this point,” someone else said. “Why she sound like Selena,” read one post with over 6,000 likes, while someone echoed, “She sounds like selena?” “She sounds like she just wanna look good for you, good for you, oh-oh,” one more person quipped, referencing Selena’s 2015 hit song “Good For You.” On the other hand, a bunch of people agreed that Ariana didn’t sound any different to them. “yall are picking up on sounds that i am not,” one person said, while another wrote, “she sounds the same.” “she sounds exactly the same… am i missing something,” someone else echoed. Do you hear any change? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to check out the full WICKED: The Official Podcast episode here.
