Ariana Grande called out the hackers who leaked her unreleased music during a recent appearance on the Zach Sang Show. The “Yes, And?” singer, 30, explained that she recorded music before she filmed Wicked and some of the songs — including “Fantasize” — ended up on social media in 2023 without her permission. “The few studio sessions that I did, which are all over TikTok, thank you so much,” she said in the February 27 interview. “I’ll see you in jail, literally,” Ariana added.
The “Positions” singer confirmed that the leaked songs were “real,” but they weren’t recorded for her own discography. “The thing is, is that those were all written for a TV show,” she explained. “Something that was not for me. So ‘Fantasize’ comes out — it was stolen. Thieves! Pirates! Crooks! Illegal! I’ll pay you more to put it away, like, to get it back.”
Ariana went on to explain how she never had any intention of releasing “Fantasize” as her own song. “It wasn’t for me. It was like a parody of a 90s girl group vibe,” she said, adding that her fans “loved” the “corny” song when it got leaked, which inspired her to incorporate it into her album Eternal Sunshine, out March 8.
“I took the note, and I kind of gave them Ariana’s version of that on the album,” she shared. “I would say that exits. So some of those seedling ideas from that time actually made their way onto the album, which is really exciting. But they’re completely different now. So although you’ve heard them — because you stole them — they’re very different now. So that’s exciting too.”
Eternal Sunshine is Ariana’s first album in four years. The track list features 13 songs including the single “Yes, And?” which she released in January. Ariana told Zach Sang that she wasn’t going to release a new album until after Wicked came out — but those plans changed when the Hollywood strikes shut down production on the film, leading her to team up with Max Martin to create new music.
“It all just kind of started pouring out, and after our first week together, I kept coming to the studio every day by myself, and it just kinda kept organically happening that way, so I just decided to react and listen to that, and I thought maybe it should come out if it’s coming out of me this way,” the pop star explained. “Maybe it should be shared this way.”
Ariana, who created the album after her divorce from Dalton Gomez, said that the record was inspired by her moments of “loss and grief” that she deal with. “I wanted to make sure that it was what I intended,” she added, “which, even at my most heartbroken or pained moments of the past few years, there was so much kindness, there was so much love, there was so much honesty, transparency and respect.”
This story originally appeared on Hollywoodlife