Ariana Grande completely changed the inflection and pitch of her voice in the middle of a sentence during her appearance on Penn Badgley’s podcast. A clip from the June 12 episode of “Podcrushed” has gone viral after fans noticed the voice change.

“That’s the only thing I thought of,” Ariana, 30, said in a deep voice, as she joked that she felt like Austin Powers while recording new music. “That’s how I felt. I was like, ‘What has happened?’”

Then, as she pivoted to discuss whether she had more music coming following the March release of her album Eternal Sunshine, the singer’s voice noticeably started getting much higher. “Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, I’ve been writing a lot,” she said in a higher, squeakier pitch. “Maybe there’s some more. I would like to do a deluxe at some point.”

While several social media users were confused by the voice change and wondered why Ariana was seemingly “faking” the real sound of her voice, others defended the pop star. Many pointed out that she likely speaks in a higher, softer tone to “preserve” or “protect” her voice. Others noted that she could be struggling to shake off the voice she used to portray Glinda in the upcoming movie Wicked, which finished filming earlier this year.

Ari previously spoke about how hard she worked to prepare for the role of Glinda in 2021. “I’ve never wanted anything as badly as this,” she recalled in a March interview. “And I tried to use that to take lessons every single day while I was doing The Voice and get ready for these auditions. I trained every day with Nancy [Banks] and Eric [Vetro] to transform my voice. Even, like, my singing voice. Everything about me I had to deconstruct to prove to them I could handle taking on this other person.”

“The Boy Is Mine” singer noted that she “kind of had to completely erase ‘pop star Ari’” in order to land the role. “It’s even harder to believe someone as someone else when you’re so branded as one thing,” she explained. “So I really had to go all the way to strip that down.” Part one of the Wicked movie is set to be released on November 27.

Meanwhile, Ari even discussed her changing voice in an interview back in 2013, noting, “I’ve been speaking in a slightly higher placement than I usually speak in because I’ve been doing a lot of interviews and I’m trying to keep my voice healthy.”