With the release of Grimes first album in five years, Miss Anthropocene, just around the corner next week, the Canadian electronic/synth-pop artist surprised fans by dropping another track from her upcoming album along with a dreamy music video on February 12—and it’s a departure from what we’re used to.
The song, “Delete Forever” opts for a more acoustic vibe with the song opening up with melancholic guitar chords, before being joined by the strums of a banjo. Despite the change in style, the song still has the familiar Grimes elements we know to expect—her haunting vocals layered over wavy beats, as well as a complementing video in the iconic trippy style she’s known for.
Grimes later talked to Zane Lowe of Beats 1 about the song, saying that the track was largely centred around the ongoing opioid crisis and her personal experience with it.
“I’ve had quite a few friends, pass away, in particular one friend when I was like 18 passed away, from complications related to opioid addiction,” she said. Grimes also added that the song was written after the death of Lil Peep in November 2017.
“It’s just artists keep dying and stuff so, I wrote this song on the night Lil Peep died or whatever ’cause I just got super, super triggered by that,” she said.
In the interview she also mentions how she has been impacted by the death of these young artists, such as JUICE WRLD and Lil Peep, because of their open discussions of mental health in their songs, and the hopelessness attached with losing them.
When asked about the change in style of her song she said that she was going for a more country tone, taking inspiration from the influential singer Patsy Cline but with her own added twist, describing it as, “when you go to a punk show and they play some acoustic shit, but it’s super aggro.”
Grimes has already released five other songs from the album including, “Violence,” “We Appreciate Power,” “My Name Is Dark,” “So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth” and “4AEM.” The full album is due out on February 21.