Baines 1
Baines 2
Paul Baines
Professor Michelle Sharkey
ENC1101
25 September 2018
Ariana Grande: From Nickelodeon Star to Top Popstar
In 2011 Ariana Grande went viral on YouTube for a cover of Adele’s Rolling in the Deep whilst co-staring on Nickelodeon’s Victorious. The clip acquired over 30 million views at the time and was particularly more interesting due to the fact that Grande was not the main star of her nickelodeon series, she had a smaller side role, all while the main character also pursued budding a musical career. This was only the warning bells to a tremendous career in music and her life as a huge figure in pop culture overall. Ariana Grande has shown that if you work hard enough you can achieve whatever you put your energy towards, this can be seen by her use of a Nickelodeon series as a platform as well as her surpassing the main character of the show.
Starting Off, the Disney channel has had plenty of experience with launching their main characters in to the music industry (i.e.: Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez) but not everyone is privileged enough to get their own Disney sitcom. Ariana still knew that there was still a platform to be held for children’s shows which is why she went in to audition for Nickelodeon’s Victorious and eventually got casted for a side role. The fact that it was a Nickelodeon series and Ariana was not the main character were just slight obstacles because she was still able to use her role as a platform to get people interested in her. As she stated in a interview with Alloy “I knew that I wanted to do music since I was a little girl, that’s why I first auditioned for Victorious’ (Grande, Alloy Digital). The resilience that Ariana has shown in her career has proven to me that no matter what you are doing presently if you put in the hard work you can achieve your largest goals in the future. Nickelodeon had no prior record of launching child stars into music careers but for Ariana she was still able to make use of the platform.
Continuing on, Ariana faced many hardships in the early years of her music career when it comes to public perception of her. As a side character for a nickelodeon series it didn’t exactly mean that she was suddenly an overnight sensation. In fact, ...
