Ariana Grande shouted out some very important people in her 2025 MTV Music Video Awards acceptance speech.
The singer, 32, took home the award for Best Pop for her song “Brighter Days Ahead” at the Sunday, September 7, ceremony at UBS Arena in New York.
“I have to say thank you first and foremost to my fans. I love you with every fiber of my being. Thank you, MTV,” Grande said in her speech. “Thank you to my dad, who acted in this video for the first time in his life and he is the best scene partner and dad in the world.”
Grande shared that “it takes a village” to bring a music video to life and that she wanted to thank everyone who had a role, from the video director and producers to the lighting team and art department. After going through countless roles, including grips and craft services, Grande finished her speech with a shout-out to some special people in her life.
“Thank you to my therapist and gay people. I love you,” she concluded.
In addition to Best Pop, Grande took home awards for Video of the Year and Best Long Form Video. She was also nominated for Best Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects.
Grande also presented the Video Vanguard Award to Mariah Carey during the show.
“As a vocalist, there’s only one queen and that’s Mariah,” Grande said while introducing Carey. “She knows no limits with her iconic five-octave range and has left an irrevocable impact on music history with her tone, technique and sound. Her music videos have become the pop playbook, giving us everything from alter egos to male drag to hundreds of iconic looks. Mariah Carey is a singular talent and artist.”
Earlier this year, Grande dropped the deluxe version of her 2024 album, Eternal Sunshine. The variant included the standard 13 tracks and six bonus tracks. Last month, Grande announced that she would be going on her Eternal Sunshine Tour next year.
“See you next year ♡ 🧸,” she wrote via Instagram alongside a post listing tour dates.
This will be Grande’s first tour in six years. She last hit the road in 2019 for her Sweetener Tour.
In addition to music, Grande has been booked and busy portraying Glinda in Wicked. The second part, titled For Good, is scheduled to hit theaters on November 21.
“I just feel like this experience was such a homecoming for me,” she said in a November 2024 interview with Australian reporter Justin Hill. “I feel like I came home to myself in a lot of ways through what I learned from Glinda [and] from Elphaba. And that was my name when I went to see the show when I was 10 years old, and it felt like a really lovely way of honoring that. It felt really full circle, and it just felt like something I wanted to do.”
