Well this is a surprise: Ariana Grande announced that a new album is coming this October! On Oct. 14, the 27-year-old pop star rocked Twitter with the following tweet: “i can’t wait to give u my album this month.” That was it — no other details on this totally unexpected album. We’re also already midway into October, meaning the album is going to drop very soon.
“That’s got to be soon! How many days hath October?!,” Ellen DeGeneres asked in Ariana’s mentions amid her recent talk show scandal, noting that October is already halfway over. Meanwhile, fans — stars included — shared their stunned reactions to the news. “Oh sweet Jesus,” “Moral of the Story” singer Ashe wrote, while Lil Nas X shared a Nicki Minaj meme that read, “So there’s This Ariana Grande Album…” Other fans tweeted ecstatic comments like “Someone needed to save 2020” and “omg the queen is coming.”
Another uproar was caused when The Weeknd retweeted Ariana’s announcement and added lock emojis over the tweets, leading fans to wonder if these two big names will collaborate once again. They last teamed up for the chart-topping track, “Love Me Harder,” found on Ariana’s 2014 album My Everything. Can you believe it’s already been six years since then? And like Ariana, The Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye) teased that he “might have another album ready to go by the time this quarantine is over” in an interview with our sister publication, Rolling Stone, in September.
Arianators were also dying to know if there would be a collaboration between Ari and BTS on the new album. “BLINK TWICE IF ARITAN IS COMING,” one such fan tweeted, referring to Ariana and BTS’s mashup name (BTS stands for Bangtan Boys).
Exactly one month before making this big announcement, Ariana teased an audio snippet of her vocals from what appeared to be a new or unreleased track. “brb,” Ariana simply wrote over the clip, keeping the post mysterious. The singer has been hard at work even amid a pandemic. She released two big collaborations — “Stuck With U” with Justin Bieber and “Rain On Me” with Lady Gaga — and even set up a recording studio at her home, which she used to vocal produce “Stuck With U.” Ariana’s last studio album, thank u, next, arrived in Feb. 2019.