Ariana Grande’s mother has opened up about the night last year that a bomb went off outside her daughter’s concert in Manchester – and the impact it had on the pop star.
Joan Grande told Elle that she was in the arena when the blast happened. “I was like a fish swimming in the wrong direction,” she recalled. “Everyone was leaving, and I was going toward the stage.
“I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew I was going to my daughter.”
Back in Florida, Joan said Ariana cried constantly and hardly spoke for two days. Then, one night, her daughter got into bed with her and said: “Mom, let’s be honest, I’m never not going to sing again. But I’m not going to sing again until I sing in Manchester first.”
With that, plans began to stage the One Love Manchester concert, which raised $23 million U.S. for the victims and their families.
Ariana admitted that getting back on stage was not easy for her but fans helped her through it. “It’s the most inspiring thing in the world that these kids pack the venue,” she said.
“Why would I second-guess getting on a f**king stage and being there for them? That city, and their response? That changed my life.”
She told Elle that “everything is different” now.
“You hear about these things. You see it on the news, you tweet the hashtag,” she said. “It’s happened before, and it’ll happen again. It makes you sad, you think about it for a little, and then people move on.
“But experiencing something like that firsthand, you think of everything differently.”