Ariana Grande is poised to have a particularly culturally dominant summer. The 24-year-old singer—who boasts a staggering 120 million Instagram followers—is releasing her fourth studio album, Sweetener, later this summer. The first single, “No Tears Left to Cry,” has reached No. 3 on the Billboard charts, and the rest of the album is likely to serve as a summer pop soundtrack (a second single, featuring Nicki Minaj and rumored to also feature Drake, is due imminently).

Grande, who is also making headlines for her rumored new relationship with Saturday Night Live cast member Pete Davidson, explained the new meaning behind her music in a just-released Fader cover story. Following the bombing at her Manchester concert, which took place just over a year ago, Grande said she is still finding it tough to articulate her feelings about the event. “I guess I thought with time, and therapy, and writing, and pouring my heart out, and talking to my friends and family, that it would be easier to talk about, but it’s still so hard to find the words,” she told the magazine.

Pharrell Williams, who worked with Grande on the album, said that after the tragedy, executives were able to better understand what they were hoping to achieve artistically. “In all honesty, I feel like [after Manchester] was when different people from the record company actually started to understand what we were trying to do. It’s unfortunate that that situation is what gave it context, but they were able to really see it then. And that’s the truth.”

Grande put it in terms that feel particularly millennial: “I’ve always just been like a shiny, singing, five-six-seven-eight, sexy-dance . . . sexy thing. But now it’s like, ‘O.K. . . . issa bop—but issa message. Issa bop but also has chunks of my soul in it. Here you go. Also, I cried 10 hundred times in the session writing it for you. Here is my bleeding heart, and here is a trap beat behind it.’ There’s definitely some crying-on-the-dance-floor stuff on this one.” (“Issa bop—but issa message” feels particularly ripe for pull-quote treatment.)

She continued, “I’ve never been this vulnerable to myself. I feel like I graduated almost. I feel like for a long time the songs were great, but they weren’t songs that made me feel something the way these songs do.”