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"   Photo: Courtesy of Republic Records  If you&amp;#039;ve turned on pop radio in the last few months, then it&amp;#039;s likely that the octave-defying voice of Ariana Grande has been there to greet you. She&amp;#039;s only 20, but &amp;quot;The Way&amp;quot; singer, who&amp;#039;s also the star of Nickelodeon&amp;#039;s Sam &amp;amp;amp; Cat and a Broadway vet, has the vocal chops of a world-traveled diva. The up-and-coming pop star is also signed to the same management team as Justin Bieber\u2014and she recently opened for on his Believe tour. So, life is looking good for the starlet. We rang up Grande this morning and the multi-talented young lady dished on her forthcoming debut album, Yours Truly (due on September 3), why she&amp;#039;s not really an actress, and her aspirations to (eventually) become a fashionista. &amp;#039;Yours Truly&amp;#039; is almost here.  Eleven days to go! I&amp;#039;m, like, [so excited] over here. How long have you actually been working on this album? Since August of 2010, I&amp;#039;d say. So it&amp;#039;s been a journey. We hear you&amp;#039;re quite the studio rat. If I could, I would not do anything else. I&amp;#039;d just be in the studio for my whole life. I would never go to parties, events, and red carpets. I would rather just be in the studio for the whole time. I don&amp;#039;t even care. Nobody has to know what I look like. I just want to make music. What was it like to transition from writing songs solo to working with seasoned songwriters and producers for the album? I grew up writing songs in my room on GarageBand, and I would make the beats just out of layering my vocals over and over again. Very Imogen Heap-inspired. But when I started working on the album, my label hooked me up with all these incredible producers. It was an easy transition for me because I was open to it. It wasn&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;Oh, I don&amp;#039;t want to work with these people. I want to write my own stuff.&amp;quot; It was like, &amp;quot;This is cool because they&amp;#039;re the best in the business, and they know what they&amp;#039;re doing. They love the sound that I love, and we can do this together.&amp;quot; People know your Mac Miller-featured song &amp;quot;The Way.&amp;quot; But what are some other album-cuts you&amp;#039;re especially proud of? I love the &amp;#039;90s-throwback ones, but I think my favorites are the ones that I wrote that have more of a doo-wop-y undertone to them: &amp;quot;Honeymoon Avenue,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Daydreamin,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Tattooed Heart.&amp;quot; Those have been with me for two years. They hold such a special place in my heart.  It must have been amazing to hear these old songs get the big studio treatment. It&amp;#039;s insane! Because I had to re-record them and re-arrange them, since I wanted them to sound more cohesive with the rest of the record. So it was a complete transformation\u2014at least for &amp;quot;Honeymoon Avenue.&amp;quot; It started off as an upbeat, rooftop-down summer song, and it turned out being almost six minutes long. It&amp;#039;s this gorgeous, mid-tempo sad song. Did you have an idea that &amp;quot;The Way&amp;quot; would be a hit song? Yes. When I recorded &amp;quot;The Way&amp;quot; I was like a giddy idiot. Like first-day butterflies. I smiled the whole time I recorded the song. The minute I heard the song, I was like, &amp;quot;Oh my God, this it. We found it. I&amp;#039;m dying. It has to come out in a month. It has to happen!&amp;quot;  Does it still blow your mind when you hear it on the radio? Every time. When it comes on the radio, I crash my car. As both an actress and a singer has it been a challenge to transition between these two artistic disciplines? To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I&amp;#039;m always like just in it. It&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I&amp;#039;m so happy.&amp;quot; t doesn&amp;#039;t take much of a transition. And my fans jumped on board right away; they were excited, because I think they knew that I loved to do music first and foremost the whole time.  You combined both acting and singing early on by doing Broadway work. Is that something you hope to revisit? Absolutely. I want to take it one day at a time obviously. I want to be a recording artist for my whole entire life. But Broadway is something I would come back to at any given moment. I love, love, love doing theater. You recently opened some shows for Justin Bieber. How was that? It was insane! I can&amp;#039;t get over how nice and warm and welcoming his fans were to me. They were all there for him. And they sounded so excited to see me too. So it was so nice and so sweet of them. I had so much fun. It was crazy. It was a whirlwind. I loved it. You can&amp;#039;t hear anything because you have your in-ears in. You can&amp;#039;t really see anything because it&amp;#039;s pitch-black. All you can see is twinkling lights, and all you can hear is the music. It&amp;#039;s like you&amp;#039;re underwater or something. How has it been adjusting to your increased fame and celebrity? Since &amp;quot;The Way&amp;quot; came out a lot has happened, a lot has changed. I&amp;#039;ve been followed around by people with cameras, which is insane to me. I don&amp;#039;t really understand it; I never will. But it&amp;#039;s okay. I was talking to [my managers] Allison [Kaye] and Scooter [Braun] about it and they were like, &amp;quot;Listen, you just need to do what makes you happy. Don&amp;#039;t worry about anything else. Don&amp;#039;t get upset. You signed up for this: you&amp;#039;re an artist, you&amp;#039;re an actress&amp;quot;. I&amp;#039;m not too comfortable with the whole celebrity thing, but I think I&amp;#039;m doing well with the music thing, and that&amp;#039;s what makes me happy. What drew you to working with Braun? He&amp;#039;s got his hands full with some of the biggest acts in the world right now. I was nervous that I was just going to be in this group of incredibly time-demanding acts and not get any help. The thing that Scooter is incredible at, though, is making each and every one of his acts feel like they&amp;#039;re his only act. He&amp;#039;s an incredible businessman; he makes all the right moves. He knows his music, too. The reason I signed with him is because we had a meeting at my house, and he was equally as passionate about my project as I was, if not more. He was like, &amp;quot;Here are the things in your past I would have changed and done differently.&amp;quot; And he told me that honestly. And I agreed with him. And he&amp;#039;s such a good friend, too. I&amp;#039;ll call him to talk about boys. And he&amp;#039;ll roll his eyes on the other end of the phone. We&amp;#039;re dying to know about your fashion sense.  You know, I never really got into fashion the way that I should have. I feel like my main focus has always been music. I go out in jeans and a hoodie every day. That&amp;#039;s what I&amp;#039;m comfortable in. But I do love girly, flouncy skirts. I want to be a fashionista, but I feel like I haven&amp;#039;t really had the time to actually be a fashionista yet.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/music/news/a18726/ariana-grande-interview/>