Grimes / Miss Anthropocene
Grimes is a force of nature. She’s a one-woman electro-pop dynamo who stirs our brains with a melancholy mix of electro, rock, j-pop, and dark wave samples. Born Claire Boucher in Vancouver, Canada, she studied creative arts in high school before focusing on music when she started attending the prestigious McGill University in Montreal and continued working in that largely French-Canadian city. In her twenties, she achieved recognition as a daring artist who indulged in cutting-edge indie music and hung out with the members of the fellow Montreal-based band, Arcade Fire. The release of her 2012 CD Visions signalled the arrival of a major new talent while 2015’s Art Angels firmly established her as a gothic electro pop rock princess.
Now Grimes is releasing her fifth and potentially the most defining album of her career – Miss Anthropocene. The concept album, her first in five years, is a dreamy, surrealist tableaux of meditations on nihilism, self-destruction and the absurd spectacle of climate change. The album reinforces her underground vibe and shows her freely indulging in her mock Goth freak persona. Although Grimes has long been branded as an electro-hybrid artist, Miss Anthropocene pushes the envelope and defies easy categorisation.
In the music video for the “Delete Forever” track, she dresses as a macabre clown as part of her chameleonic musical shift-shaping. In “Violence,” she references a terrible relationship from the past in alternately mysterious and joyful tones. “U feed off hurting me… U wanna make me bad, and I like it like that,” declares Grimes.
Apart from her music, Grimes is equally famous for controversial remarks on climate change not to mention her at times turbulent relationship with billionaire Elon Musk. She recently confirmed that she is pregnant with Musk’s child and defends herself against internet trolls and haters who have questioned the notion of a counterculture singer/songwriter entering into a relationship with a Silicon Valley mogul.
“I understand it. It’s just part of the thing,” Grimes said. “I respect people’s opinions and I get where people are coming from. I respectfully disagree. There’s been a lot of sensationalistic stories that paint things in a different light than they actually are, but people are mad because they care about the world being better and they misunderstand what my boyfriend does”…