Grimes has spoken out about sexism, touring stress and her "diss track" filled new album in a new interview.
The singer has been working on the follow-up to 2012's Visions for some time now, having scrapped a handful of songs last year around the time she released stand-alone single 'Go'. In a new interview with The Fader, though, Grimes is keen to set the record straight on the "scrapped" album."
"I was doing a bunch of stuff, and maybe a bit before ‘Go,’ I was like, ‘You know, my life is getting a lot better. I’m going to put all this stuff on a hard drive and start again.'", she said. "There were just hundreds of songs - on this album that I’m making now, there’s at least a hundred songs that won’t make it onto this. I think all musicians have songs that don’t make it onto records."
Speaking of her last album, Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, revealed that a last-minute deadline led her to lock herself in a room for a month: "I did do a lot of drugs. And I did not eat very much. And I blacked out the windows. But I also did sleep at times, and [former Arbutus employee] Marilis [Cardinal] brought me food and Devon [Walsh] brought me food and [local musician Matthew] Duffy came and visited me."
Watch the video for 'Go' ft. Blood Diamonds below
Boucher also revealed the treatment she endures as a high-profile female musician. "I get threats constantly - all female musicians do," she said. "People want to, like, rape and kill you. It’s, like, part of the job. One time I was backstage at a show, and there was this random guy in my dressing room, and he just grabbed me and started making out with me, and I pushed him off. "Then he went, 'Ha! I kiss-raped you' and left. Shit like that happens quasi-frequently. When I play a show I have to have, like, three bodyguards in front of the stage, and then I have to have bodyguards on the side."
Speaking of the more insipid sexism she endures from co-workers, she said, "Going into studios, there’s all these engineers there, and they don’t let you touch the equipment. I was like, 'Well, can I just edit my vocals?' And they’d be like 'No, just tell us what to do, and we’ll do it.' And then a male producer would come in, and he’d be allowed to do it. It was so sexist. I was, like, aghast. It made me really disillusioned with the music industry. It made me realize what I was doing is important."
This disillusionment that contributed to the writing of "a diss track about male producers." Speaking of the album in general, she added, "They’re not all diss tracks, but there’s a lot of diss tracks."
Read Grimes' full interview with The Fader here.
