Ariana Grande

The American singer who turned a four-octave voice and a Nickelodeon sitcom into one of the defining pop careers of the century so far. Ariana Grande-Butera was born in Boca Raton, Florida in 1993 and started at fifteen on Broadway in the musical 13, then spent three years as Cat Valentine on Victorious before anyone heard her sing seriously. Yours Truly arrived in 2013 and My Everything a year later, and by Dangerous Woman in 2016 she had stopped being a television actress who recorded and become a singer whose range — reaching into the whistle register, the territory Minnie Riperton and Mariah Carey mapped out — was the point of the records rather than a novelty on them.

What followed was unusually public. A bombing at her Manchester concert in May 2017 killed twenty-two people, and she returned to the city within two weeks to headline a benefit. Sweetener and Thank U, Next came out five months apart in 2018 and 2019, the second written and released at a speed pop stars are not supposed to manage, and both went to No.1. She has won thirteen MTV Video Music Awards, made more than sixty music videos, seven of which have passed a billion views, and appeared on Time's list of the hundred most influential people twice. She continues to record, and the records keep changing shape.