“Miss Anthropocene” by Grimes
By James Schaak
Before Claire Boucher was famous, or even indie famous, she often cited iconic pop superstars, such as Mariah Carey, as some of her main musical inspirations for her futuristic electro-pop project, “Grimes.” However, the most Mariah Carey-esque thing that Grimes has ever done is not a musical stunt, but a social one: the public debut of her relationship with tech billionaire Elon Musk at the 2018 Met Gala. This kind of gaudy, headline-grabbing exhibition of a romantic relationship is straight out of Carey’s playbook but was out of character for Grimes. Twitter (the app where the couple met) lost its mind that night trying to figure out the hows and whys of their coupling. This media frenzy is what brought Grimes out of relative obscurity, joining Carey in the world of Vogue lifestyle vlogs and brand-name corporation advertisements. Months later, Grimes declared that her fifth studio album, “Miss Anthropocene,” would “make climate change fun.” Again, the internet lost its mind over this quote but it further publicized the upcoming album and elevated Grimes’ fame. To round out this rule of three, Grimes announced that she was seven months pregnant in early January, via semi-nude Instagram post. This pregnancy announcement was a perfectly timed promo for “Miss Anthropocene,” which was released six weeks later.
Grimes, like many of her contemporaries (Charli XCX, FKA twigs, Janelle Monae, etc.) has always walked a tightrope between the indie underground and the pop mainstream. But as the genre-bending of the internet has grown alongside her career, the gaps between those two realms of the music world have grown smaller. “Miss Anthropocene” almost erases the boundary between indie and pop music by taking defining cues from popular culture while maintaining the “artist before entertainer” mentality. In that aspect, it is another thrilling experiment by Grimes of the boundaries of what can be considered pop. The album also furthers the case that Grimes is one of the greatest artists working in the music industry today. Almost every creative aspect of the album was done by Grimes, including the vocals, songwriting, music video direction, and album cover art. However, Grimes’ real forté lies in the production and engineering of her songs. There is a Spotify playlist on Grimes’ page that argues that “ethereal” should be considered its own genre, and a listen to any of Grimes’ music thus far is a compelling testimony. The otherworldliness of Grimes is not something that is generated by her persona, but rather her music. The persona is just the reflection of her carefully produced art.
Miss Anthropocene, the namesake of the album, is the fictitious god that Grimes created to represent the climate crisis. The lyrics throughout the album do not specifically mention the environment. Grimes is using the climate crisis as a metaphor for inevitable doom. This subtext is revealed in the first song of the album, “So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth.” Like a lot of Grimes’ music, the song’s meaning is conveyed through her airy, ultra-feminine vocals and in public statements, in which Grimes has revealed that the song is about how she feels pregnancy is the surrendering of power to both love and the patriarchy. Taiwanese rapper 潘PAN (formerly Aristophanes), who collaborated with Grimes on her last album, is brought on “Darkseid,” a song that draws its namesake from a Justice League villain. Darkseid is one of the DC comics’ “New Gods,” which is the name of another song on the album. Villainy is another major theme on “Miss Anthropocene.” The namesake of the album, after all, is a villain itself.
After the depressing sound of the first two songs, the guitar strumming that opens “Delete Forever” feels welcoming and bright, as if someone switched the aux to from Nine Inch Nails to Taylor Swift. The lyrics and context of “Delete Forever” convey a different mood. Here Grimes is more straightforward lyrically than on most of her songs. This proves to be an effective method to talk about her own struggles with drug abuse and how that narrative is not unique in her generation. After all, it was written on the night Lil Peep died.
The rest of “Miss Anthropocene” mostly works within the gothic dance pop soundscape that Grimes is known for. The music video for “Violence” is worth a watch for its Sun Tzu reference, militarized girl group choreography, and Sony AIBO robot dog cameo among other eclectic details. “4 ÆM” draws inspiration from the Bollywood blockbuster “Baijrao Mastani,” continuing a career-long theme of fantasy escapism. In a statement to Apple Music, Grimes explained that if the first nine songs on the loose concept album are the movie, the album’s closer, “IDORU,” is the “end title.” This makes sense, as it opens with birdsong, a stark contrast to the electronic dystopianism of the rest of the album. The cheerful nature is the light at the end of the album’s long tunnel. But the song is not without nuance. The title is a double entendre, so when Grimes sings the chorus, the distorted vocals make it sound as if she’s saying “I adore you” but what she is really saying is “idoru,” a Japanese term for a female pop star pampered to the point of perfection. It’s a textbook Grimes move.
If the listener is using Spotify or Apple Music, then the song that automatically comes on after “IDORU” is “We Appreciate Power.” Although it is not included on the standard edition of the album, “We Appreciate Power” serves as a reminder of why “Miss Anthropocene” is not the cathartic work of nihilistic perfection Grimes wishes it could be. The song is an anthem for surrendering all power to AI overlords. Grimes seems almost giddy in both this song and in her public statements about replacing humans with robots, a rather callous idea. Inspiration for the song was attributed to Moranbong, a state-sanctioned girl group in North Korea. When Grimes displays this level of eccentricity in her references, it can come off as a disregard for the reality of millions of North Koreans who are being oppressed right now, in part by real-life propaganda. Grimes has always been out of touch with reality—that’s her whole thing. But it becomes tenuous when she is talking about very real issues, like the climate crisis, in an abstract and trivial manner, especially because she now has the means to help change some of these issues.
It is a big part of the reason why gays, music geeks, and social justice warriors on Twitter attack Grimes for her problematic tendencies and billionaire boyfriend but turn a blind eye when her idol, Mariah Carey, makes similar faux pas. No, Carey does not release high-concept, fantasy-sci fi art about the climate crisis, but she is a pop star who dates billionaires and shies away from legitimate activism. Instead of tackling discussions about the greatest obstacle facing humanity’s future, Carey is currently centering her brand around Christmas, a holiday that in some ways represents the apex of two systems that maintain the environment-destroying status quo: capitalism and Christianity. This apolitical strategy is working for Carey, because she has never pretended to be woke. In a way, it shows restraint when Mariah Carey assumes the position as the Queen of Christmas and Songbird Supreme, rather than engaging in the empty celebrity activism of her peers. Plus, while Christmas represents systemic issues to a certain brand of the academic-social justice type, it represents unequivocally positive themes, like joy and giving, to the vast majority of celebrants. The pop masses would rather worship Carey's universality than Grimes’ highbrow inaccessibility. In this sense, Grimes is much more similar to art-pop act M.I.A.
In May 2010, “The New York Times” published a profile of M.I.A. written by Lynn Hirschberg. The story was a scathing takedown of M.I.A.’s habit of turning complex global conflicts into a stylish and rebellious alternative pop image and spurred a years-long feud between M.I.A. and the newspaper. In the article, Hirschberg exposed M.I.A. as somewhat of a sham by describing M.I.A. talking about inequality while being served rolls at the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel and discrediting many of her provocative statements with the help of Diplo, the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum, and the State Department. Although, to her credit, Grimes has always been more genuine than M.I.A., comparisons between the two artists are becoming more instructive, as evidenced by the adverse reactions that Grimes is beginning to receive on Twitter. The backlash is well warranted too. It’s troublesome to watch a famous White woman, who dropped out of McGill University to pursue avant-garde art, talk about a catastrophe that is destroying island nations in the South Pacific while the father of her unborn child has a net worth more than six times larger than all of those countries’ GDPs combined. The context surrounding Grimes’ liberal elitist status can, at times, make this album feel as shallow as a Hollywood actress’ plea for change from atop an awards show stage. She is no longer the broke artist who made her breakthrough album while on a speed binge in a freezing crack den.
In the decade since M.I.A. has gained her fame and wealth, she has, for the most part, floundered in the eyes of the critics who once praised her. As the New York Times characterization pointed out, your art isn’t really radical if you’re making it from the comfort of your mansion in Beverly Hills. If Claire Boucher and Elon Musk do not start taking notes from the way M.I.A.’s demise resulted from style-over-substance activism, their controversial public images may meet the same conclusion as the subject matter in “Miss Anthropocene:” an inevitable doom.