Do we like Grimes?
Our score: 5 out of 10. Real stains and real good on the record, and not much charity or advocacy turned up to tip it either way.
Grimes is the Canadian musician and producer whose last full album was 2020's Miss Anthropocene. By her own account in April she had quit music a couple of years ago, then came back with Psy Opera, a concept album about AI. It'll be her first on her own label, after she left Columbia.
The AI talk is the big headline of her 2026. She says she doesn't use generative AI in her music, though she admitted a DeepSeek model helped write lyrics for one track. She also called AI a threat, saying it's a bigger deal than Jesus, and that she supports companies like Anthropic. Whether that's a prophet or a marketing campaign is your call.
Now the harm check, which is where it gets sticky. In a 2023 Wired interview she said Musk doesn't hate trans people and that his views come from fertility worries. PinkNews noted that claim ignores trans people who have had children after transition. That's her own defence of a position that hurts people, and the account is on file.
The other side of the ledger: in July 2024 she publicly backed Vivian Wilson after Musk's interview remarks about her. After the gesture Musk made at Trump's January 2025 inauguration drew Nazi comparisons, she was slow to respond. She first said she wouldn't make a rash statement, then wrote that she very much denounces Nazi-ism and white supremacy.
She went further in February 2025, writing that she regretted being “tricked” by people posing as supporters of critical thinking. The Daily Beast framed it as a critique of the anti-woke forces behind Musk's rise. For a person once so close to that world, it's a real shift in what she says, though it doesn't wipe out the 2023 defence.
On how she treats people, Poppy accused her of bullying during the 2018 making of Play Destroy. When Poppy reignited the beef in 2024, Grimes said she hoped Poppy grows up. She denied asking Poppy to sign an NDA and said she wouldn't take legal action. It's one contested story, not a pattern we could find.