OTR: Grimes’ “Miss Anthropocene,” The Lockdown Album That Thrust Me Into Space-Age Haze — And Why It Was Exactly What I Needed
You might be familiar with Canadian musician Grimes from her highly publicized (and controversial) relationship with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
I mean, who could forget about their head-to-head battle (and eventual concession) with California naming laws after announcing the birth of their son, “X AE A-12”?
But the avant-garde artist has had a fascination with space since long before her ties to the man hell-bent on colonizing Mars.
Grimes’ 2020 release Miss Anthropocene — a play on words combining the terms misanthrope (humans who disdain other humans) and anthropocene (the current geological age) — sounds like music in the vein of futuristic-apocolyptica: e.g. the Dune series, Fifth Element and Blade Runner 2049.
Miss Anthropocene propels you into a world of ethereal, space-agey cocktail of electronic-world-music-dream-indie-pop layered with Grimes’ light, hazy vocal and elusive lyrics. It sounds like everything you’ve ever heard and nothing you’ve ever heard all at once.
In (arguably) simpler terms, it sounds like something that’d be looped and remixed in an alien discotheque.
Miss Anthropocene arrived in February 2020 — just before the world locked down due to the coronavirus.
Enter mid March.
COVID-19 hit the United States like a Mack truck. My college had sent us packing with half a semester left and no plan. My track season was over. Businesses shut their doors. Everyone seemed to be living in a constant state of confusion and fear, and reality? What a foreign concept.
And on top of it all, in the peak of the chaos, I was rushed to the hospital at 2 a.m. after spiking a 103° fever and experiencing the worst abdominal pain of my life. After one misdiagnosis, four days on the wrong antibiotics, an additional doctor’s visit and three urine tests later, I was diagnosed with severe mononucleosis.
No running, no walking, no caffeine (the horror!), no alcohol, no leaving the house, no nothing: doctor’s orders.
So I did the only thing I could do: I turned to music.
Spotify surfing became my pastime. Of course I turned to my go-to’s initially, and queued my seven favorite playlists till they were done to death. None of the songs fulfilled what I needed from music at that time. I needed something new.
Enter Miss Anthropocene.
I found the album while sifting through my Discover Weekly, one of Spotify’s personally curated playlists. I noticed “Violence” by Grimes and having heard all about her work via Pitchfork and one of my best friends’ minor obsession, I thought, “ah, what the hell. Let’s see what the hype is all about.”
Famous last words, right?
I was hooked.
“Violence” was just the tip of the iceberg. Miss Anthropocene became the sountrack of my life in lockdown. During my indisposition, I completed Zoom University during the day and looped Grimes by night. I’d stay up till ungodly hours blasting the album through my AirPods, throwing glitter eyeshadow on my face and dancing around like a drunken space pixie.
For a month and a half, my reality was suspended by Grimes’ space-age soundtrack. Once my symptoms started to lessen, I quite literally got dressed up with nowhere to go. I experimented with my hairstyles and even more with my makeup pallettes. I reverted almost back to this childlike imaginative state and embraced my nightly one-woman dance parties.
As weird as it was, it was somehow exactly what I needed at the time.
Reality was already fucking weird with an unprecedented pandemic, school in a virtual cesspool, the 24-hour news cycle in a tailspin and everyone being subject to the stay-at-home orders. Oh, and mono. Can’t forget about mono.
So it mattered not that I became a sparkly, ethereal life form who just wanted to dance and transcend space and time for a month.
Even in the oddest of circumstances, you can find the simple pleasures, and milk them for what they’re worth.
Did I romanticize the hell out of that month? Absolutely. Would I do it again? Unquestionably.
Romanticizing the mundane was critical to keeping me going in that insane period of time — and it’s a trait I’ve kept up with throughout the year.
My advice to you: find the extraordinary in the mundane. Savor the small victories. If you find the smallest slice of solace in the unexpected, hold onto it, and keep it close.
You may find exactly what you need in the most unexpected place, and unexpected time.
And when life hands you lemons, squeeze the fucking day.
