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 a release date now finally confirmed, here’s everything we know so far about the producer’s fifth album.
What’s the latest news?
- Grimes has confirmed a release date for the new album and shared its artwork and new tracklist
- Listen to a third preview of the album – ‘So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth’
- As well as the brilliant ‘We Appreciate Power‘, Grimes has also released the single ‘Violence‘.
- She’s also teased that she’s ready to just “sit around and sing” on the new music.
- It also looks like the album is finished, with Grimes telling fans that work on the record is “way done”.
See below for more info…
What is the release date for Grimes’ new album?
After years of teasing an arrival date for ‘Miss_Anthropocene’, a press release along with new single ‘So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth’ revealed that the album will come out on February 21, 2020.
Has the new album’s artwork been revealed?
It has – the new cover is predictably other-worldly, depicting an animated Grimes taking a selfie while trapped in a computer photo editing software. See it below.
What does Grimes’ new single sound like?
Released in two versions – the ‘Art Mix’ and the shorter ‘Algorithm Mix’ (the most Grimes way of referring to a single edit we’ve ever heard) – new single ‘So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth’ dials back the pop intensity of ‘We Appreciate Power’ and ‘Violence’ and instead opts for a slower, probing track that’s just as effective. Listen to both versions below.
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…
https://www.instagram.com/p/BvNqgDcAMPK/?utm_source=ig_embed
Does Grimes’ new album have a tracklist?
After sharing a potential tracklist in May along with the caption ‘subject 2 change but just so y’all know it’s real. working titlez‘, the announcement of ‘Miss_Anthropocene”s release date and artwork, a final tracklist has been revealed, featuring singles ‘So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth’ and ‘Violence’. View it below.
01 So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth (Art Mix)
02 Darkseid (Grimes & 潘PAN)
03 Delete Forever
04 Violence (Grimes & i_o)
05 4ÆM
06 New Gods
07 My Name is Dark
08 You’ll miss me when I’m not around
09 Before the fever
10 IDORU
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’and the brilliant ‘Violence’.
A gargantuan, goth-inspired cut, ‘We Appreciate Power’ 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.
Meanwhile ‘Violence’, her collaboration with ‘i_o’ is a sharply-syncopated dose of dark, R&B-inspired gothic dream-pop.
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”.
well i said i’d post some snippets of new music earlier so this prob sounds terrible thru my phone recording but it’s the cheesy love song i was talking about that i don’t like but everyone else likes, made the instrumental w my new mellotron! pic.twitter.com/KDZLIY8OcF
— ༺GRIM ≡ﾟS༻ (@Grimezsz) June 5, 2018
so this one is like my ethereal chav jam that’s like … a cyberpunk interpretation of the bajirao mastani movie (plz watch this incredible film if u haven’t) from mastanis perspective, dunno if it makes sense without the low end. these r just demos bein recorded thru my phone so pic.twitter.com/mdyXQyScj5
— ༺GRIM ≡ﾟS༻ (@Grimezsz) June 5, 2018
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:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1HdVKSnixl/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_video_watch_again
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”.
just played label new music they rly dig it so hopefully smthn soon ?
— ༺GRIM ≡ﾟS༻ (@Grimezsz) December 16, 2017
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.”