Label spats, climate change demons and a gothic new single: Grimes' new album isn't gonna be a straightforward one
Grimes has been teasing a new album, a follow-up to 2015’s ‘Art Angels’, for a good few years now. Between releasing a mammoth, goth-pop single, calling her previous LP “a stain on my life” and throwing shade at “my piece of shit label”, in true Grimes fashion it doesn’t seem like it’ll be a simple, straightforward release.
With a potential tracklist, teasers of certain songs and a hell of a lot of responses to fan questions on social media, Claire Boucher has been drip-feeding information about ‘Miss_Anthropocene’ for a good while now. With the album coming soon (we assume) but still with no firm release date, here’s everything we know so far about the producer’s fifth album.
- Grimes has shared a new teaser video for the album’s first single
- Date of first single release has also been confirmed as September 13
What is the release date for Grimes’ new album?
There is no firm release date for the album, but having shared a full new single and snippets of other tracks, along with a potential tracklist, it’d be a surprise if the record doesn’t land in 2019.
Does the album have a title?
Yes! Grimes’ fifth album will be called ‘Miss_Anthropocene’. Announcing the album title back in March in a lengthy post on Instagram, Boucher revealed the inspiration behind the album’s name.
“It’s called Miss_Anthropocene. It’s a concept album about the anthropomorphic Goddess of climate Change: A psychedelic, space-dwelling demon/ beauty-Queen who relishes the end of the world. She’s composed of Ivory and Oil,” wrote Boucher. Completely nice and normal, then…
Does Grimes’ new album have a tracklist?
Well, potentially. Back in May, Grimes revealed a potential tracklist for ‘Miss_Anthropocene’ on her Instagram story, along with the caption ‘subject 2 change but just so y’all know it’s real. working titlez‘.
Titles range from ‘thats what the drugs r 4’ to ‘Nymphs At Versailles’, which are, we’re sure you’ll agree, about as Grimes as it can get.
View the projected tracklist below.
– thats what the drugs r 4
– So Heavy I fell through the earth
– Darq Souls
– adore u (beautiful game)
– Black Swan Blues
– blaze forever like a useless star
-Cryptid (Heavy metal magazine)
– 4 æm
– Favourite Psycho
– Deth Angels
– Nymphs At Versailles
– Last Call ??
– B4 the fever
What will Grimes’ new album sound like?
Grimes has talked extensively in interviews and on social media about the sound of ‘Miss_Anthropocene’, but currently the main piece of information we have in this regard is first single ‘We Appreciate Power’. A gargantuan, goth-inspired cut, the song swaps the bubblegum pop sheen of ‘Art Angels’ for something dirty, distorted and pummelling. It’s closer to Marilyn Manson than to anything on the producer’s 2015 LP.
Grimes has said that ‘Miss_Anthropocene’ will be “highly collaborative and most glorious light”in a reply to a fan on Instagram. She has also gone on to share snippets from songs on Twitter.
So far, she’s shared a “cheesy love song” and “ethereal chav jam”.
Grimes has also gone on record calling ‘Art Angels’ “a piece of crap” and “a stain on my life”, so don’t expect it to be a carbon copy of her last album.
We’ve been given another taster of what the new album might sound like after Grimes shared a snippet of the album’s first single on social media. Grime also revealed that the first single from the album will drop on September 13. You can watch the video below:
Why has Grimes’ new album been delayed?
Well! Grimes has been very public about the struggles she’s had while making her new album, not hiding her feelings on a hell of a lot of stuff in the vicinity.
In December of 2017, she replied to a fan question about new music on Twitter, saying: “just played label new music they rly dig it so hopefully smthn soon”.
Something evidently changed, though, as soon after she shared a (now-deleted) post on Instagram, saying: “welp no music any time soon after all 🤔🤔🤔🙄🙄🙄🙄 music industry is trash”.
Having a habit of giving updates and then deleting the posts, she also tweeted then deleted the comment: “yeah but i’m solving it. i just have to take one last hit. it sucks, but i’d rather not make fans suffer thru more unexplained drama. theres some srsly fucked up and crazy shit going behind the scenes in my career this whole time i’ve never spoken of to protect myself legally”.
There then appeared to be a series of issues with the producer and her label 4AD. First, eagle-eyed fans pointed out that her and the label had unfollowed each other on Twitter, before things got way less ambiguous, with Grimes momentarily changing her Twitter bio to “4ad can suck my dik”.
Clarifying in a reply to a fan on Instagram, Grimes said her new album (‘Miss_Anthropocene’, we assume) will be “one final album for my shit label” before she releases another record “on a label of my choosing”.
What are the themes of the new album?
Oh boy. If half of what Grimes has said ‘Miss_Anthropocene’ is about prove themselves true, we’re in for a hell of a trip with this new album.
In the lengthy Instagram post announcing the new album, Grimes went into detail about the pretty out-there concepts behind it.
“It’s a concept album about the anthropomorphic Goddess of climate Change: A psychedelic, space-dwelling demon/ beauty-Queen who relishes the end of the world. She’s composed of Ivory and Oil.”
“I love Godly personifications of abstract/ horrific concepts (For example, Mars as the Roman God of War) — so I wanted to update the list to include our modern issues.
“Each song will be a different embodiment of human extinction as depicted through a Pop star Demonology. The first song ‘we appreciate power’, introduced the pro-AI-propaganda girl group who embody our potential enslavement/destruction at the hands of Artificial General intelligence.
“Climate change is something I’m only ever confronted with in a sad/ guilty way….” she continued. “Reading news and what not… so my goal is to make climate change fun (lol..??)…. uhhh… (I mean, everybody loves a good villain… re: the joker, Queen Beryl).. so maybe it’ll be a bit easier to look at if it can exist as a character and not just abstract doom. “
She expanded on these climate change comments in a new feature with Crack Magazine.
“The way I figure it is that climate change sucks and no one wants to read about it because the only time you hear about it is when you’re getting guilted,” she said. “I wanted to make climate change fun.”
“That’s why I’m making this pro-climate change album,” she added, saying she hopes to “find a way to make that useful to society.”
Is Grimes releasing two new albums?
Grimes has hinted every since she started teasing ‘Miss_Anthropocene’ that she could be releasing two new albums in quick succession.
Replying to a fan on Instagram, she seemed to confirm that two new records would be coming, but not at the same time. The first album would be released via 4AD, and the second with an unnamed other label.
She also hinted at maybe releasing more new music before the album.
“It’s possible I will drop an EP or a few more singles of synth-based stuff b4 the album because its mostly ethereal nu metal (ish), and I know a lot of ppl miss the synths and whatnot,” she wrote on Instagram when announcing ‘Miss_Anthropocene’.
She backed up these claims in her recent Crack Magazine feature. “I just made a bunch of music this month and I’ll probably drop that as an EP first, honestly,” she stated. “Just so I can clear my mind to then go back and finish the goddamn album.”