Grimes

Claire Boucher grew up on the west side of Vancouver and taught herself piano by working through Chopin bar by bar.⁠[1]

At 18 she left Vancouver to study neuroscience and psychology at McGill University in Montreal; at 20, drawn by the local music scene, she abandoned her studies to devote herself to songwriting.⁠[2]

In 2010 the Montreal independent label Arbutus Records signed her and released her debut album Geidi Primes; label founder Sebastian Cowan, a high school friend, also served as her mixing engineer and manager.⁠[2]

In 2011 Geidi Primes was reissued on cassette through No Pain In Pop, and she released a split EP with d’Eon on the Hippos In Tanks label.⁠[3]

She signed with the British independent label 4AD, and her third album Visions came out through 4AD on February 21 in North America and March 12 elsewhere, while Arbutus kept the Canadian release.⁠[4]

Visions made the 10-album short list of the 2012 Polaris Music Prize, which honors the best Canadian album of the year.⁠[5]

Visions won her many mainstream fans, and The Guardian ranked it second among the year’s best albums; the video for the single Oblivion was shot clandestinely for $3,000 at football and motocross events in Montreal.⁠[6]

At the non-televised Juno Awards gala in April 2013, Visions won Electronic Album of the Year; she was also nominated for Breakthrough Artist of the Year, which went to the Weeknd.⁠[7]

The Juno Awards’ official profile describes her as a Vancouver-born, self-taught singer, musician, songwriter, engineer, producer and visual artist who signed with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation management in 2013.⁠[8]

After moving to Los Angeles she released Art Angels digitally through 4AD on November 6, 2015, with the physical edition following on December 11; she directed the video for Flesh Without Blood herself, and Janelle Monáe guests on Venus Fly.⁠[9]

Critic Andrew Ryce noted that she had scrapped an earlier finished album; apart from a few collaborators she produced and played everything on Art Angels herself, with a bigger sound and lyrics confronting self-doubt and expectation.⁠[10]

Kill V. Maim from Art Angels won the 2017 Juno Award for Video of the Year.⁠[11]

In March 2018, Venus Fly again won the Juno Award for Video of the Year.⁠[12]

On December 12, 2019, she performed 4ÆM, written for the video game Cyberpunk 2077, at The Game Awards; in the game she voices the cybernetic pop star Lizzy Wizzy, and the song also appears on her next album.⁠[13]

Her fifth album, Miss Anthropocene, came out on February 21, 2020; its title combines misanthrope and Anthropocene and refers to a goddess of the climate crisis. It was her third and final release through 4AD, and she wrote, produced and engineered most of it herself.⁠[14]

Critic Rhian Daly called the album stuffed with imagination and beauty, noting that her relationship with Tesla chief Elon MuskElon MuskElon Musk is an entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and has long served as chief executive of Tesla; he also took part in creating PayPal, OpenAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He acquired Twitter in 2022, and his businesses span spaceflight, electric vehicles, energy, artificial intelligence, and social media.Open the full entry had brought her more scrutiny in the celebrity press.⁠[15]

Critic Louise Bruton found that the album depicts human extinction through nu-metal and cold electronica and called it an eye-opening work.⁠[16]

Ten digital artworks she made with her brother were sold as NFTs under the name WarNymph Collection Vol 1 for nearly $6 million in total. A calculator by digital artist Memo Akten estimated that the 303 editions sold of the piece Earth used as much electricity as an average EU resident uses in 33 years.⁠[17]

On February 28, 2021, she announced on Twitter that the drop would take place on Nifty GatewayNifty GatewayNifty Gateway was an American non-fungible token (NFT) digital art platform acquired by the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini in November 2019. Known for curated, time-limited drops and for allowing purchases in U.S. dollars and by credit card, the platform recorded more than $300 million in sales during the 2021 NFT boom and closed in 2026.Open the full entry the next day, and she said part of the proceeds would go to Carbon180, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing carbon emissions.⁠[18]

In a 2021 interview Elon Musk said that after three years together the two were “semi-separated” but still loved each other and were on great terms, partly because his work was mainly in Texas and hers in Los Angeles.⁠[19]

After teasing it on Instagram on December 1, 2021, she released Player of Games, the first song from her new project Book 1; it followed A Drug from God with Chris Lake, the debut of NPC, the “AI Girl Group” she launched.⁠[20]

She appeared as the guest of episode #281 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing identity, music production, SpotifySpotifySpotify is an audio streaming subscription service offering on-demand music, podcasts, and audiobooks through a free ad-supported service and a paid Premium subscription. Its parent company, Spotify Technology S.A., is incorporated in Luxembourg, has its principal operations in Stockholm, Sweden, and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker SPOT). It helped move the recorded-music business from buying and owning music to on-demand streaming and is one of the largest audio streaming subscription services by users.Open the full entry, experimental music, her vision of the future, motherhood, consciousness, the metaverse and technology.⁠[21]

On April 24, 2023, she said on Twitter that she would split royalties 50–50 on any successful AI-generated song using her voice, adding “I like the idea of open sourcing all art and killing copyright.” On April 30 she posted a link to the Elf.Tech website.⁠[22]

Elf.Tech, launched with the Los Angeles studio CreateSafe, lets users turn their singing into a “GrimesAI-1” voiceprint; creators own the resulting recordings and split master royalties 50%.⁠[23]

Her manager Daouda Leonard said the beta platform drew more than 15,000 users within two days.⁠[24]

In December 2023 she voiced Grok, a rocket-ship character in Curio’s screen-free AI plush toys for children aged 3 to 7, saying she hoped conversation would spark children’s imagination and replace iPads.⁠[25]

On April 13, 2024, the second half of her DJ set on CoachellaCoachellaCoachella, formally the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, is a music festival established in Indio, California, in 1999 and operated by Goldenvoice. Held at the Empire Polo Club, it combines varied musical genres, large art installations, paid admission and brand partnerships.Open the full entry’s Sahara stage was repeatedly interrupted by equipment malfunctions.⁠[26]

The next day she apologized on X, explaining that it was one of the first times she had outsourced essential tasks such as track BPMs and organizing the SD card.⁠[27]

The single Artificial Angels, written from the perspective of AI, was co-produced by Grant Boutin and Vadakin.⁠[28]

In an X post on October 17, 2025, she said the only AI on the song is the voice at the beginning and end, and that “I am opposed to ai music in some forms.” It was her first single credited solely to Grimes since Shinigami Eyes in early 2022.⁠[29]

X: Public account: https://x.com/Grimezsz (opens in a new window)⁠[21]