The explosion that shook the Manchester Arena on Monday night, killing at least 19 people and injuring 59 others, took place during a concert by American pop sensation Ariana Grande. According to reports, the singer was not injured in the incident.
The 23-year-old already has three commercially successful albums to her name - ‘Yours Truly’ in 2013, ‘My Everything’ in 2014 and and ‘Dangerous Woman’ in 2016. Her concert at Manchester was part of the tour for the ‘Dangerous Woman’ album.
She started out as a child actor in a Broadway musical called 13, before moving to act in a show on the kids TV channel Nickelodeon called ‘Victorious’ in 2009, also recording for its soundtrack album. Her full-fledged music career started only after that, with her first album's lead single, ‘The Way’, being a Billboard hit. Since then, Grande has been a regular in the Billboard ratings, and has four Grammy nominations, one MTV Video Music Award and three American Music Awards to her credit, among others.
She was included in TIME Magazine’s ‘The 100 Most Influential People’ list of 2016, with Jason Robert Brown – the playwright who worked with Grande in 13 – lauding her for her “remarkable empathy”, “ravenous intelligence”, “cool discipline” and “voracious ambition”.
Interestingly, Grande enjoys a huge following on social media, having 45.6 million followers on Twitter, and 105 million on Instagram – the latter being more than the likes garnered by Taylor Swift and Beyonce, who are households names compared to Grande.
On a tour to promote her third album 'Dangerous Woman', Grande was slated to follow her Manchester show with two in London (on 25 and 26 May), followed by Belgium, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy. She was then scheduled to move to South America, Mexico, Japan, Australia and Singapore, among others.
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