Ariana Grande showed a side of her personality most of us haven’t seen, in an interview with Marie Claire. For the October issue of the magazine, the singer spoke about the challenges she has faced in trying to differentiate her public persona from that of the Nickelodeon character that made her famous, writing a song that was deemed “too sexual” at just 14 years old, and her desire to be seen as a serious R&B artist.

Grande recalls that as a teen, she would play along when people confused her with Kat Valentine, the character she played on Nickelodeon’s Victorious. “People liked her and they accepted her, and they thought I was like her,” the singer explains, “So I used to pretend to be a little more like her than I actually was.”

In reality, though, Grande had a much more grown up vision regarding the direction she wanted her career to take. She explains that at 14, “I was ready to make an R&B album. I was like, ‘Where is that Mary J. Blige collab? Where is that Natasha Bedingfield writing session? Where is my session with India.Arie?’” So, the singer says, “I wrote this song called ‘Higher’ and the lyrics were too sexual, too mature.” She goes on, “My mom was like, ‘This is a great song, but damn, you’re too young for this.’”

Eventually, Grande says, she decided she had officially outgrown her tween-oriented public image. She recalls, “I was like, ‘Guys, there has to be a really distinct difference between me and my character.’” So she set about making that distinction with “The Way,” a hit single featured on her premiere album Yours Truly last year. She explains, “I died my hair back to brown. I made out with a rapper in the video. I made the point I wanted to make.” The singer adds, “And I was excited to do so after so many years of pretending to be somebody else in front of a lot of people.”