Ariana Grande has never been the kind of pop star to shy away from being vulnerable. She shares her highs and her lows with her fans regularly on social media and isn’t afraid to cry on stage if she needs to. And she continues her transparency in a new interview with Vogue magazine, where no topic—from Manchester to Pete Davidson—seemed off-limits.

Some of the most heartbreaking moments in the interview come as she discusses the aftermath of her ex-boyfriend Mac Miller’s death. (He passed away in September 2018 due to an accidental overdose.) At one point the writer, Rob Haskell, asks Grande “whether it is fair to call [her album] Thank U, Next a response to Miller’s death.” She gets teary and replies, “It’s just hard to hear it so plainly put.”

She says that after Miller’s death, her friends in New York City rallied around her and suggested maybe recording some music. “My friends know how much solace music brings me, so I think it was an all-around, let’s-get-her-there type situation,” she said. “But if I’m completely honest, I don’t remember those months of my life because I was (a) so drunk and (b) so sad. I don’t really remember how it started or how it finished, or how all of a sudden there were 10 songs on the board.”

“I think that this is the first album and also the first year of my life where I’m realizing that I can no longer put off spending time with myself, just as me,” she continued. “I’ve been boo’d up my entire adult life. I’ve always had someone to say goodnight to. So Thank U, Next was this moment of self-realization. It was this scary moment of ‘Wow, you have to face all this stuff now. No more distractions. You have to heal all this shit.’ ”

Grande says her Coachella performance was also emotionally-charged because of the memories of Miller that came with it. “I never thought I’d even go to Coachella,” she said. “I was always a person who never went to festivals and never went out and had fun like that. But the first time I went was to see Malcolm perform, and it was such an incredible experience. I went the second year as well, and I associate…heavily…it was just kind of a mindfuck, processing how much has happened in such a brief period.”

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