Ariana Grande’s 98-year-old grandmother has become the oldest person ever to score a hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
The pop star listed her “Nonna” Majorie Grande as a singer and a writer on her new track “Ordinary Things” featured on her latest album Eternal Sunshine – and she’s made history after the song entered the run-down at number 55.
The feat has made Grande the most senior person to ever land on the chart since it was founded in 1958.
Billboard reports she has overtaken the record from late songwriter Fred Stobaugh, who was 96 when his song “Oh Sweet Lorraine” charted on the Hot 100 at number 42 back in 2013. Stobaugh passed away three years later.
Majorie is heard talking about her late husband Frank and giving relationship advice. “And when he’d come home and I’d see him, when he first gets off that train,” she says on “Ordinary things.”
“It was like God almighty arrived. It was like seein’ daylight. I mean, I could’ve packed up and left a million times. You know? It’s not that we never fought. You can overcome that,” she explained to listeners.
“… And as I told her, never go to bed without kissin’ goodnight. That’s the worst thing to do, don’t ever, ever do that. And if you can’t, and if you don’t feel comfortable doing it, you’re in the wrong place, get out,” she added.
Ariana previously opened up about her decision to feature her grandmother on the song during an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music 1, revealing she was searching for a way to close the album and she struck gold when listening to one of her Nonna’s voice notes.
“I knew ‘Ordinary things’ was the end of the album. I was like, ‘This is the last song, but I wonder how I can put that button on it and have it land emotionally the way that I feel it can, and how can I answer the question?’ … [The answer was] right smack in the middle [of the voice] note,” she explained.
“I always record my Nonna because you never know what she’s going to say. I had this 30-minute voice note of her and her friend Shirley talking. I think it’s a little bit of, ‘Wow, our loved ones, our friends and our family have the ability to instantly just sort of soothe and calm and simplify things that are so complicated and heavy at times,'” the singer added.
