Grimes

Grimes in 2018

**Claire Elise Boucher** (born March 17, 1988), known professionally as **Grimes**, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, record producer and visual artist. Born and raised in Vancouver, Grimes began releasing music independently in the late 2000s, releasing two albums, *Geidi Primes* and *Halfaxa* in 2010 on Arbutus Records. She subsequently signed with 4AD and rose to fame with the release of her third studio album *Visions* in 2012. It produced the singles "Genesis" and "Oblivion", and received the Juno Award for Electronic Album of the Year. Her fourth studio album *Art Angels* (2015) received critical praise, and was named the best album of the year by many publications. Her music incorporates elements of varied styles, including dream pop, R&B, electronic music, and hip hop.

She represented Canada at the I Eurovision Americas Song Contest, in San José, Costa Rica, with the song '*We Appreciate Power*', obtaining the 1st place.

## Biography

### **1988–2008: Early life**

Boucher was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She is of Québécois and Ukrainian descent. She was raised Roman Catholic, and attended Catholic school. Her mother is Sandy Garossino, former Crown prosecutor and arts advocate. In 2006, Boucher relocated from Vancouver to Montreal to attend McGill University, but left the school in early 2011 before finishing her degree.

According to the timestamps on her original MySpace page, Boucher began writing music under the name Grimes in 2007. Her performer name was chosen because at the time, MySpace allowed artists to list three musical genres. She listed grime for all three, before knowing what grime music was. Grimes is self-taught in music and visual art.

### **2009–2013: Career beginnings and *Visions***

Boucher's debut album as Grimes, *Geidi Primes*, a concept album inspired by the *Dune* series, was released by Arbutus Records on cassette in 2010. Later in 2010, Boucher released her second album on Arbutus Records, *Halfaxa*. After the release of *Halfaxa*, Boucher began publicly promoting Grimes and started touring beyond Montreal. In 2011 Boucher released five songs on her side of the split 12" with d'Eon, *Darkbloom* (through both Arbutus and Hippos in Tanks). Beginning in May 2011, Grimes opened for Lykke Li on her North American Tour, and the following August her debut album was re-released through No Pain in Pop Records, in CD and vinyl format for the first time. In 2011, she collaborated with DJ/producer Blood Diamonds.

Upon extensive touring and positive reception of her first two albums and her side of *Darkbloom*, Boucher signed with record label 4AD in January 2012. Considered Boucher's breakout record, *Visions* appeared on a number of publications' year-end lists. *NME* included it on their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2013. *Visions* won the Electronic Album of the Year Award and Grimes was nominated for the Breakthrough Artist of the Year at the Junos. Grimes also won the Artist of the Year Award at the 2013 Webbys.

The album's second single, "Oblivion", also received critical acclaim and was produced into a music video co-directed by Emily Kai Bock and Grimes. *Pitchfork* ranked "Oblivion" at number one on their 200 Best Tracks of the Decade So Far list in 2014. In interviews following the album's release, Boucher explained that she was assigned a strict deadline by which to have her third album finished far before it was complete, resulting in her recording the bulk of *Visions* while isolated in her Montreal apartment for three consecutive weeks. Notably, this intensive recording session included a period of nine days without food, sleep, or company, with Boucher blacking out her windows since she generally could not make music as readily during the day. She described the writing process as being "equally enjoyable and tortuous", feeling that its difficulty contributed to its success.

In April 2013, Boucher posted a written statement addressing her experience as a female musician in an industry rife with sexism and expressed disappointment that her feminist stance was often interpreted as anti-male. When speaking about her preference to produce all her studio albums herself, she said, "I don't wanna be the face of this thing I built, I want to be the one who built it".

On December 17, 2013, Boucher posted to her Tumblr that she had employed the services of Jay Z's management company, Roc Nation.

### **2014–2017: *Art Angels***

On June 26, 2014, Grimes premiered her new track "Go", produced by and featuring Blood Diamonds. It was a track that had been written for and rejected by Rihanna and was premiered on Zane Lowe's radio 1 show. *Rolling Stone* ranked it number fourteen on their Best Songs of 2014 list.

On March 8, 2015, she released a self-directed video for a demo from the abandoned album, "REALiTi", which received critical acclaim from music critics, being named Best New Music by Jenn Pelly from Pitchfork, calling it the "best new Grimes song since *Visions*."

On March 15, 2015, Grimes and Bleachers released their collaboration, "Entropy" for the HBO TV show *Girls*. On May 24, 2015, Grimes announced via a series of tweets to her fans that her upcoming album will be "surprise" released sometime in October. She also explained that the album would be a departure from previous singles "Go" and "REALiTi" and was recorded with "real instruments," a departure from the primarily synth and sampler driven composing of her prior releases. In the summer of 2015, Grimes toured with Lana Del Rey for several of her Endless Summer Tour dates. She then toured in the fall of 2015 as the headliner of her own Rhinestone Cowgirls Tour with opener Nicole Dollanganger. On October 20, 2015 Grimes announced that the name of her upcoming album would be *Art Angels* by sharing the album's cover art on her Instagramaccount. On 26 October 2015, Grimes simultaneously released the lead single of the album, "Flesh Without Blood," and a two act music video featuring both "Flesh Without Blood" and an additional song from the album, "Life in the Vivid Dream." After its November release, the album received very favourable reviews, garnering an 88 (out of 100) rating on Metacritic and the Best New Music designation from Pitchfork. Jessica Hopper of Pitchfork described *Art Angels* as "evidence of Boucher's labor and an articulation of a pop vision that is incontrovertibly hers... an epic holiday buffet of tendentious feminist fuck-off, with second helpings for anonymous commenters and music industry blood-suckers."

*Art Angels* was named best album of the year by *NME*, *Exclaim!* and *Stereogum*. It peaked at number 1 on the *Billboard* US Top Alternative Album Chart and number 2 on the *Billboard* Top Independent Album chart. Grimes won the 2016 International award at the Socan Annual Awards and the 2016 Harper's Bazaar Musician of the Year Award in October.

In the spring of 2016, Grimes toured Asia and Europe with supporting act Hana on the Ac!d Reign Tour. Grimes continued touring through the summer of 2016, performing at various music festivals across North America and opening for Florence and the Machine on select dates of the How Beautiful Tour.

Continuing the series of music videos for songs off *Art Angels* that began with "Flesh Without Blood" and "Life in the Vivid Dream" ("Act I" and "Act II," respectively), Boucher released the music video for "Kill V. Maim" ("Act III") on January 19, 2016 and the music video for "California" ("Act IV") on May 9, 2016. Boucher crafted a slightly remixed version of "California" for the music video in order to achieve a less "dissonant" visual/auditory mix. This alternate version of California has not otherwise been officially released for sale or streaming. On August 3, Grimes released the song "Medieval Warfare" as part of the soundtrack of the summer blockbuster *Suicide Squad.*

On October 5, 2016 Boucher with friend and collaborator Hana Pestle, more commonly known by stage name Hana, released "The Ac!d Reign Chronicles," a lo-fi series of seven music videos including songs by Grimes ("Butterfly", "World Princess Part II", "Belly of the Beat" and "Scream") and Hana ("Underwater", "Chimera" and "Avalanche"), each starring in their respective segments. Additional appearances include Aristophanes in SCREAM and two of Grimes' backup dancers, Linda Davis and Alyson Van, throughout the series. "The AC!D Reign Chronicles" were recorded over the course of two weeks during the duo's time touring Europe and were made with minimal production, shot exclusively on iPhones with no crew aside from Boucher's brother, Mac Boucher, who assisted with filming. Post production, Claire Boucher and Hana Pestle edited the videos in their entirety. "Concept & Art direction" are credited to Claire Boucher.

On February 2, 2017, Grimes premiered on Tidal the high budget futuristic music video of "Venus Fly", starring herself and Janelle Monáe. The video was uploaded on YouTube on February 9.[66] She won Best Dance Video for "Venus Fly" at the Much Music Video Awards. In 2017, Grimes won a JUNO Award for Video of the Year, featuring "Kill V. Maim".

### **2018–present: *Miss Anthropocene* and collaborations**

By late 2017 and early 2018, Grimes had revealed on both Instagram and Twitter that she was working on her fifth upcoming album, which she stated would be released by "spring, but realistically fall". However, on February 15, 2018, she updated her status on a previous Instagram post about her delaying the potential release of the unnamed album, stating "well no music any time soon after all... music industry is trash". It was later revealed that this was due to a clash with her label, 4AD, not her management company, Roc Nation. She later apologized for this statement, removing it from her social media. She added, "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. [sic]" She later revealed on an Instagram post that she would eventually be releasing two albums, and that "they would be separated by a period of time", with the first being released with 4AD, and the second with an undisclosed label. Boucher stated that this first album will be "highly collaborative and most glorious light", with the second highlighting themes of "pure darkness and chaos". The release dates of the two albums have not been confirmed.

On April 10, 2018, Grimes was featured on "Pynk" by Janelle Monáe. "Pynk" was the third single from Monáe's album *Dirty Computer*. On May 30, 2018, Grimes was featured on "Love4Eva" by LOONA yyxy from their EP *Beauty & the Beat*. On June 15, 2018, she was featured in a video for Apple's Behind the Mac series on their YouTube channel, with a preview of a song from her upcoming album titled "That's What the Drugs Are For". On the same day, she posted two Twitter videos previewing two songs from her upcoming album, "adore u (beautiful game)" and "4 æm". In 2018, Grimes composed the theme music for Netflix's animated series *Hilda*.

On October 31, 2018, Grimes was featured on "Play Destroy" by Poppy on her album *Am I a Girl?*. The collaboration had been hinted at in May 2018 through a series of Instagram postings from both artists.

On March 19, 2019, Grimes announced via Instagram that her new album will be titled *Miss\_Anthropocene* and will be a concept album "about the anthropomorphic Goddess of climate Change..." and "Each song will be a different embodiement of human extinction as depicted through a pop star Demonology." Her goal with this album is to "make climate change fun... so maybe it'll be a bit easier to look at if it can exist as a character and not just abstract doom." In terms of what she'll be releasing beforehand, she says, "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 people miss the synths and whatnot."

On April 4, 2019, Grimes posted a promotional post on Instagram for the piece about her in *Cultured Magazine*, and in it she casually stated, "p.s. I hid an ambient psychedelic somewhere on SoundCloud I doubt u can find it but if u can I dunno, there tis." In an earlier post dated March 24, 2019, Grimes had posted a picture with a Russian caption translating to 'princess.' One Instagram follower of Grimes (username 'grimesfedida') speculated that "… The lyrics from your story it's from World Princess Part.3?" Grimes responded, "hha it's Frank Sinatra … i wish i wrote that." Someone found the secret track, titled "принцесса" (Russian for "princess"). It was posted March 29, 2019 on SoundCloud by the username Dark, location listed as Death Star, Antarctica.

On March 13, 2019, Grimes released a demo unrelated to the upcoming album. The demo is titled "Pretty Dark", which, according to the video description, is "NOT a single... just a demo. This is from an AR musical i'm working on." She adds, "...gna start making AR (or illustrated?) 'sub-members' within Grimes (The art angels, as it were...) They are the main characters from the book/musical im working on..." She has this "whole other world" she's working on besides what Grimes currently is. She also mentions that "while im finishing my album im just gonna start casually dropping stuff as i see fit." The character in the music video is named Dark.