Ariana Grande may have gotten her start on Nickelodeon, but she just proved that she’s also a Disney Channel fan by singing a classic Hilary Duff hit in a video for R.E.M. Beauty posted Tuesday (Aug. 19).
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In the social media clip, the pop superstar tests out a shimmery liquid eye shadow. While deciding to add even more of the product to her lids — because why not? — Grande launches into an impromptu cover of the Lizzie McGuire star’s “Why Not” that is absolutely pitch perfect, despite the Wicked actress being on the spot.
“Why not take a crazy chance?” she sings, adding her signature vibrato and improvised runs to the original melody. “Why not do a crazy dance?/ If you lose the moment, you might lose a lot.”
Resharing the video to her Instagram Story, Duff expressed her disbelief that Grande had actually paid tribute. “Well I get gotten by AI a lot — but this really happened,” she wrote.
Released in the early 2000s, “Why Not” was featured in the soundtrack for Disney’s The Lizzie McGuire Movie, in which Duff starred. The track also appears on Duff’s Metamorphosis album, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2003.
Seven years later, Grande would make her debut as Cat Valentine in Nickelodeon’s Victorious, kickstarting her music career shortly after the show premiered. After releasing five No. 1 albums of her own — later snagging a sixth with 2024’s Eternal Sunshine — the star would revisit acting in the critically acclaimed Wicked movies, the second of which hits theaters this November.
Ahead of part two’s premiere, Universal Studios recently shared a first-look video stitching together scenes from the Wicked sequel with commentary from the cast. “We really get to see how far we can push this friendship,” Grande says of characters Glinda and Elphaba in the clip. “There’s nuance, there’s hurt, there’s forgiveness … These two women love each other so much, and they truly change each other for the better.”