Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

it's most definitely "Pop"

"Oblivion" was her slow burn sleeper hit, nothing on here comes close

I thought "Go" sounded like a huge hit and it wasn't, nothing on Art Angels sounds as current

seem to recall that "Oblivion" was instantly loved by all when gr8080 posted the video in some thread many moons ago and is not a slow burn sleeper anything

the way she sings "uncontrollable" in flesh without blood is sooooooo good

I'm really into the part where she sings "baby believe me"

I'm not saying these songs could never be hits, just that the public typically require an in for anything that doesn't sound utterly familiar at the outset; an artist they know, a sound they're already fond of or interested in, a soundtrack appearance. This last really should be a priority for Grimes' label/management if they want her to cross-over, but even then I suspect it would have made more sense with Oblivion (perhaps Lena Dunham at a party) than anything on this album.

Which doesn't change the fact that this album is totally brilliant.

I'm not saying these songs could never be hits, just that the public typically require an in for anything that doesn't sound utterly familiar at the outset; an artist they know, a sound they're already fond of or interested in, a soundtrack appearance.

― Tim F, Monday, November 16, 2015 4:25 PM (32 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this isn't quite true -- the public typically requires a marketing apparatus, but if there is one then almost anything will fly. this year "I'm an Albatraoz," "Honey, I'm Good" and other songs, all of which would seem hilariously unlikely, were all accepted without question

I like to imagine that there is some perfect late 90s / early 00s psueudo alterna-rock-dance chick album that has the perfect precedent for a lot of the stuff on here but which we're all too terrified to go back and listen to. Like, buried on some Bif Naked or Poe or Vitamin C album.

I briefly considered the first Imogen Heap album but when I went back to reskim it wasn't on-point.

― Tim F, Sunday, November 15, 2015 9:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

katy rose's "candy eyed"?

I suspect it would have made more sense with Oblivion (perhaps Lena Dunham at a party) than anything on this album.

― Tim F, Monday, November 16, 2015 4:25 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Stevie D complained that they were playing Ke$ha and not grimes in the S2 bushwick party scene IIRC

was listening to this in the office today and a coworker asked if they play this music on the radio. I said no, she said they should. so i looked at her like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"Easily" is nice, i could see that in a commercial

I agree that if Grimes ever did anything as monomaniacal as "Honey I'm Good" or "I'm an Albatroaz" she'd have a much better chance of crossing over.

Even "Go" ultimately sounds a bit too deep for the audience it purportedly courts.

I wouldn't call them "monomaniacal," I'd call them "fucking weird"!

Those kinds of songs don't need a contextual framework because the listener "gets" them within five seconds basically - whereas Grimes' current songs flit and dart all over the place.

grimes needs to soundtrack a youtube of squirrel suit people and get with that caffeine beverage $$

there's even a doppler effect sound in Kill V. Maim. Maybe have a squirrel suit person fly by the camera at that part. it will be huge.

It's interesting to see how the dissonance triad of "Grimes is a great auteur" / "Art Angels unequivocally shoots for the highs of mainstream pop" / "Mainstream pop is shit music for dumb people" plays out in different individuals. For some, it collapses into "Art Angels is shit and not Grimes' *true* sound"; for some, "Now Grimes is shit"; for some, "mainstream pop is probably OK actually".
Of course this doesn't apply to everyone, since there were plenty of people into mainstream pop *and* Grimes, so that they are fine with taking the album as a successful convergence of things they loved already.
As for me, I am totally fine with mutually contradictory ideas, so I think G is wonderful, the album is wonderful, and 90% of chart music is shit.

this song was actually done for the girls soundtrack ftr:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt0IiGxNntw

after M.I.A. and Lana Del Rey and The Weeknd had the gigantic pop hits that various people on ilm hoped or feared would or wouldn't happen (and countless other pop-leaning critical darlings didn't get any chart love), it feels kinda tedious to have this kind of back-and-forth about another artist. maybe it will happen, maybe it won't.

She's not up to it as a live performer to be a pop super star. One of the worst shows I have ever seen live.

Isn't the question not whether or not she could have a pop hit but whether or not there's something intrinsic to her current direction and to her art that could find popular appeal? I don't know the details of Lana del Rey's hit (looks like most of her singles just surfed the lower reaches of the hot 100) but certainly with MIA her hit was a quirk of cinema crossover and a particularly effective sample, an extrinsic quality; she didn't become a charting artist bc she never really had a grasp on what a broad audience is interested in musically; with weeknd something similar happened, he needed songwriting ringers /producers brought in to crossover

Of course there's something about weeknd, del Rey, MIA that has some intrinsic appeal. But while what the chattering classes choose to gravitate towards in an artist may have some broad appeal if properly marketed or reshaped, you're talking about artists who in the main are beloved by a self selecting audience for some quality that doesn't include reaching outwards and instead appeals to a potentially large but still marginal cult

I'm not saying grimes is one of these artists per se.... I think that's why this question of pop has come up so much for her, in addition to her expressed interest in pop, is that she feels like an artist who could potentially have both a writer-appealing sensibility but also write amazing pop records...this album to me feels a bit conservative in that respect, but then I don't think popular appeal is an inherently conservative move

Largely agree with the above - my interest in the above topic is less whether a chart crossover will happen and more the varying overlapping meanings of "pop" that get deployed in these discussions and where this music fits on that blurry venn diagram.

What I could certainly imagine is Grimes writing tunes for other more chart-friendly artists (as per Chairlift) and scoring a hit that way.

I just heard the Realiti demo after getting used to the album version and the demo is so astoundingly better. I had forgotten of the extended break in the demo halfway into the song. I'm realizing now that Art Angels is lacking in these moments of clarity. Every song just goes up and up without marveling in the atmosphere that has been created for too long. Visions lived for those moments and Art Angels has killed them almost entirely (Butterfly has a good one and Easily seems to move from one into another).

I'm guessing she'll make her way onto the Radio One playlist before too long but the difference between UK and US radio seems so vast that I wouldn't extrapolate anything from that.

Why do you all like Realiti so much? It's one of the weaker things here for me.

Have you heard the demo version Matt? It's quite different.

It really isn't.

^

Not as different as early reactions on this thread suggested, but different enough that the demo sounds like the pinnacle of a sound not captured on this album. Whereas the album version is good but not really a standout (which is not too much of a criticism: everything here is pretty great to awesome IMO).

the demo is sublime, album version nothing special

if I read spotify correctly Flesh w/o Blood has 3 million listens, that's p good (compare: "Everything is Embarrasing" (2014) has 9 million)

Also, 3 million views on YouTube.

Another thing with the "Realiti" demo is that the video clip is very important to me and a lot of my enjoyment of the song is tied up in the ~vibes~ it disseminates.

was suggested upthread that album version is mocking the demo, vocals def seem less sincere to me

Why do you all like Realiti so much? It's one of the weaker things here for me.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, November 17, 2015 6:16 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it was released early and ppl binged on it when they were starved for grimes

not sure I understand what you mean by "less sincere" xp

'sincerity' as a musical criticism term should be a temp ban offence by now

the 90s club remix synth sounds kind of insincere, or just bored, like you can picture someone limply pressing down on the keys when they played that part

She's not up to it as a live performer to be a pop super star. One of the worst shows I have ever seen live.

― mickcsmitkh (micarl), Monday, November 16, 2015 9:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

did you see her last night at terminal 5?

butterfly almost too on the nose for a closer but i love it and never want it to end .

i think california could be a mega smash. 'cause i get carried away' gives me chills

A secret thing with Skinny Puppy? Really?

Bringing out guests =/ make her good live

works for taylor swift

i think i'm more amused at this idea you need to be able to bring it live to make it as a pop star

oblivion crossed over in ways i never would've imagined, i can see this managing some exponential version of that kind of pop success but radio seems very very unlikely, even if it was smuggled in via movie/tv means. i'm not sure it totally matters now anyway tbh. like there's a level of radio penetration she would need to become a certain kind of megastar, it certainly doesn't hurt to have radio on yr side, but it's not as necessary as it was. on first listen i thought the new one was good but it would never replace oblivion in my heart or whatever but now i'm not so sure. the lyrics do make me wince at times though. still mainly just happy that she pulled it off.

There are several songs on here that I could imagine being ubiquitous movie trailer "paper planes"-type megahits, flesh without blood among them. I hope it happens because grimes is brilliant and she deserves to become obscenely rich.

What kind of listener wouldn't dig Pin? Thr dreamy eccentricity of Oblivion is totally absent from a track like this. Nothing in the sound of this album would be weird/unfamiliar/alienating to average pop listeners

The "dreamy eccentricity" of "Oblivion" was totally its crossover selling point though. It always struck me as pretty likely that "Oblivion" (19.6m youtube views) would enjoy a very similar brand of success as Robyn's "Dancing On My Own" (18.3m youtube views), and certainly it fulfills a similar function as a dancefloor staple at a certain type of house party.

"Pin" is amazing, but I don't know what context it fits into, it's so busy and dense and gloriously self-impatient. I doubt it would alienate listeners, but it doesn't necessarily fulfill a role for groups of listeners either.

the janelle monae song is kind of a clunker