Grimes is teasing a new album. In a feature with Interview magazine, the musician said she has a new album on the way called Psy Opera. Here’s everything we know so far.
How long has it been since Grimes’ last album?
Grimes released her most recent album, Miss Anthropocene, in 2020. Though she signed to Columbia Records the following year, she only put out a few one-off singles before departing the label. She also remixed tracks by Magdalena Bay and Aespa. Last year, she unveiled the Miss Anthropocene demo ‘idgaf’, as well as a new song, ‘Artificial Angel’, via her own label, Nazgul Recording LLC.
What else has Grimes worked on since Miss Anthropocene?
In the Interview feature, Grimes told science-fiction author Nnedi Okorafor that she “totally quit music a couple years ago” with the intention of being a stay-at-home mom. “I couldn’t listen to music without getting PTSD,” she said. “I was only interested in writing and reading. I started writing poetry, and then someone was like, ‘Can you write a rap for this K-pop artist?’ I started writing the rap and I was like, ‘This is too good. I’m keeping this because it’s crazy.’ But then we had a problem for eight months where I was just a white rapper… Luckily we moved past that.”
She also said that one of her “side quests” is working on a documentary about “machine consciousness” called First Contact, clarifying she doesn’t use generative AI in her own music.
Will AI be a theme on the new album?
Grimes did admit that for one of the songs on Psy Opera, ‘DeepSeek’, she employed the Chinese AI model of the same name for help writing lyrics. As for how it might be framed as central theme on the album, the musician had this to say: “I was thinking about how everyone is like, ‘We’re building gods,'” Grimes said of the writing process. “I’m like, ‘Why do you automatically assume you’re so much lesser? You’re literally responsible for creating AI. You’re abdicating so much self-esteem and pride and responsibility and agency when you act like whatever AI is, no one has a hand in it.’ And I was getting emotional because we might really go extinct, for a number of reasons. Human life is very frail and time is very long. But I’d hope, if we had good relations with AI, they would take our DNA and make more of us when things get more hospitable.”
Has a release date been announced?
Grimes hasn’t shared any other details about the album’s release.
Has Grimes released any singles from the album?
No. But during her surprise during Cobrah’s Weekend 1 Coachella set earlier this month, she did debut a new collab song called ‘Sign From God’.
This post will be updated…
