When Ariana Grande emerged as the main pop girl to watch in the early 2010s, she already had two women whose careers she admired in her corner: Madonna and Beyoncé.

While appearing on a new episode of the Shut Up Evan podcast posted Friday (Oct. 24), Grande revealed how the two icons welcomed her with open arms after her music career first started taking off post Victorious. “I’m very lucky that my idols have been very kind to me,” she began.

“I remember Madonna immediately was very kind,” the Wicked star continued. “I think she was one of the first people to reach out and, like, give me a warm welcome, and it was just really cool. I was overwhelmed by it, because I love her so much.”

Madge would go on to support Ari throughout her career, even recording a voice-over for Grande’s 2018 “God Is a Woman” music video. On the podcast, the R.E.M. Beauty founder also shouted out Mariah Carey — “And then, of course, Mariah,” were her words — as a personal hero who took her under her wing. The pair have since collaborated a handful of times, including on a remix of Grande’s Billboard Hot 100-topping single “Yes, And?”

As for Queen Bey, Grande recalled how the Destiny’s Child alum extended an invitation to meet her in 2013. “Beyoncé had me come visit a music video she was shooting, and I was just there in the corner,” she told host Evan Ross Katz. “I was like, ‘Why am I here?’ It was after I sang ‘Tattooed Heart’ on the AMAs. She invited me to set to visit her, and she just was being kind — she gave me a little bit of advice, and, you know, I asked, but she was so kind.”

“But yeah, I feel like I had people I really looked up to embrace me,” Grande added. “It made me feel safe.”

More than a decade later, and Grande is now arguably in the same league as all of the personal heroes she mentioned. The vocalist has earned two Grammys and six No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, to name just a couple of her successes.

But, as revealed on the podcast, Grande recently considered quitting music. After landed a role in Wicked, she thought that 2020’s Positions would be her last album.

“I didn’t think I was gonna make an album ever again,” she shared. “When I left for London, that was kind of my secret, but I didn’t think I was going to.”

Thankfully, Grande said that playing Glinda in the movies “totally rearranged everything about [her] relationship to creating,” which would inspire her to make 2024 album Eternal Sunshine. She’s now gearing up to go on a mini tour in support of the LP in 2026.

Watch Grande’s full interview on Shut Up Evan above.

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Who said ear protection couldn’t be chic?

Loop just dropped a collaboration with Swarovski, and it’s anything but boring. Centered around Loop’s protective Experience 2 earbuds and Swarovski’s love of all things shiny, the drop is perfect for the fashion-forward concertgoer in your life. The collaborative piece is available right now on Swarovski’s website, retailing for $125. Each earplug features a squishy silicone tip that gives the plugs a nice and snug fit without irritation.

The loop portion is crafted of stainless steel with a high-shine PVD chrome coating that transitions into six dazzling integrated crystals. Each crystal is presented in a variety of distinctive shapes and cuts while the precise faceting ensures a jewel-like finish. If the silicone tip isn’t fitting snugly, you can upgrade the size for a perfect fit, even in the smallest of ears. These earplugs are reusable, made for long-term use thanks to their sturdy silicone and AB composition. If the earplugs weren’t cool enough, they also come with a carrying case in white with Loop’s name embossed on the front.

A keyring is connected to the circular case with a Loop-branded hangtag. The added keyring allows you to hook your earplugs onto your bag or keys, keeping you and your ears protected wherever you may go. Of course, they’re super chic, but these earplugs also protect the ears.

Loop x Swarovski Experience 2 Earplugs

$125

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Decorative earplugs.

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Unlike your traditional earplugs that block sound, Loop’s offerings filter sound to reduce overall volume, while keeping speech and music clear. This makes Loop earplugs a must-have for concerts or festival settings, given that you can still hear the music nice and clear without damaging your eardrums.

Soundwaves enter the Loop plug via a small opening. Those waves then travel through the hollow channel on the inside of Loop. This shallow channel acts as an acoustic resonator. It is the same length as your ear canal and has a quarter-wavelength resonance at 2700 Hz. By mimicking the way your ears function, the sound you receive with the earplugs sounds natural.

The whole goal of earplugs like these is to marry fashion and function, giving prospective buyers more interesting options than your standard earplugs. Not just a pretty face, Loop’s product is backed by innovation, giving you the best quality without sacrificing a thing.

Bruce Springsteen and Sony Music had different reasons for signing on to Deliver Me From Nowhere, the new biopic starring Jeremy Allen White as the Boss.

“I’m old. I don’t give a f–k what I do anymore,” Springsteen told Time. “As you get older, you feel a lot freer.” And while Sony was willing to do whatever Springsteen wanted to do, the label had other considerations, too: Its publishing company paid $500 million for Springsteen’s catalog in 2021, and one of the most powerful weapons it can deploy to boost streaming and revenue is a star-studded film. “The biopic is the cherry on top of the sundae, if you will,” says Sony marketing exec Monica Cornia. “Films bring more awareness to the artist brand and fans to the funnel.”

Cornia, senior vp of marketing and partnerships for Sony’s Commercial Music Group, adds that the late-2024 Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown and the 2022 Elvis Presley biopic Elvis “created a new baseline for streaming” both artists’ catalogs. They had “double-digit growth post-release and have sustained elevated streaming levels to date,” adds a Sony rep. 

Deliver Me From Nowhere focuses on 1982’s Nebraska — not the most commercial of Springsteen’s albums. But the star power from The Bear‘s Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen and Succession‘s Jeremy Strong as his manager, Jon Landau, will “create a huge cultural moment,” says Cornia, which Sony can use as “the initial exciting point for us to start to lean in.”

Over the past five years, the music business’ most successful songwriters have sold their catalogs (and sometimes other assets) for astronomical sums. In 2020, Dylan received a reported $300 million to $500 million for the publishing of his 600-plus songs, and Paul Simon, Stevie Nicks, David Bowie, James Brown and many others followed with deals estimated between $90 million and $250 million. “Everybody who’s acquiring a catalog is looking for opportunities to find new audiences and tap into a fanbase that’s already engaged,” says Sophia Dilley, executive vp of Concord Originals, the indie-label division that co-produced last year’s HBO doc Stax: Soulsville, U.S.A., about the storied Memphis recording home of Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and others. “A natural place to do that is within the documentary or biopic space.”

After its November 2018 premiere, Queen‘s Bohemian Rhapsody biopic hit more than $1 billion worldwide in box-office sales over just five months, increasing the value of the band’s publishing and recording catalogs. In 2024, Sony purchased them for $1.27 billion. 

Two months before the release of Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen’s catalog streamed 15 million times per week. Afterwards, it spiked to nearly 62 million, and settled by the end of 2018 to 38.2 million, according to Luminate. By comparison, Dylan’s catalog drew 7.1 million weekly streams two months before A Complete Unknown, spiked to 19.5 million after the biopic and dropped to 12 million in February, also according to Luminate.

It isn’t just the biopic itself that sets the streaming bar higher for iconic artists like Queen, Dylan, Presley and Springsteen — it’s the marketing campaign and social-media activity surrounding the films. In Springsteen’s case on Friday (Oct. 24), the heavily advertised Deliver Me From Nowhere arrives with a new release geared to superfans, the five-disc box set Nebraska ’82: Expanded Edition, which includes Springsteen’s long-awaited electric version of the album and a performance film. “Our goal is to take advantage of the moment, but also to make sure we’re consistently marketing the catalog and the artist going forward,” Cornia says. 

Concord, like many labels and publishers, plans similarly broad marketing campaigns for its upcoming biopics on Mississippi Delta bluesman Robert Johnson (release date unknown) and R&B keyboardist and Beatles collaborator Billy Preston (sometime in 2026). “The risk is it doesn’t have the longevity you want it to,” Dilley says, “But in the immediate, it definitely has an impact, because you’re spending money on a campaign, which helps audience awareness.”

The timing of Deliver Me from Nowhere and A Complete Unknown, after the Springsteen and Dylan catalog sales, is probably not coincidental, according to Alaister Moughan, founder of Moghan Music, a London-based company that specializes in valuations of publishing catalogs. Major artists who sell catalogs, and top companies that spend big money to buy them, are highly aware that a well-timed biopic can improve the songs’ future value. “The past five years in particular, when an artist is looking to sell their catalog, they’ve been quite strategic,” he says. “They’re tying in, ‘We’ll be interested in a biopic.’” 

Still, the focus on the lesser-known Nebraska, rather than, say, Springsteen’s later blockbuster Born in the U.S.A., which made him a worldwide star, suggests Springsteen and the filmmakers are not focused on quick streaming revenue. “Maybe it’s more of a long-term view,” Moughan adds, “rather than, ‘We want the Bohemian Rhapsody of Springsteen this year.’”