Grimes
photo by Eli Russell Linnetz

Grimes thinks "live music is going to be obsolete soon"

UPDATE: Grimes says more stuff about live music and addresses Zola Jesus calling her “the voice of silicon fascist privilege.”

photo by Eli Russell Linnetz

Grimes studied neuroscience at Montreal’s McGill University before devoting herself to her music career full time, and that background informed her recent appearance on astrophysicist Sean Carroll’s Mindscape podcast, where she discussed making music in the age of artificial intelligence. “I feel like we’re in the end of art, human art,” she said to Carroll. “Once there’s actually AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), they’re gonna be so much better at making art than us…once AI can totally master science and art, which could happen in the next 10 years, probably more like 20 or 30 years.”

Grimes, who currently goes by c, the symbol for the speed of light, also spoke on Mindscape about how she thinks technology could have an effect on a specific art form: the performance of live music. “I think live music is going to be obsolete soon,” she said, pointing out that “DJs get paid more than real musicians.” “It’s kinda like Instagram or whatever,” she continued. “People are actually just gravitating towards the clean, finished, fake world. Everyone wants to be in a simulation. They don’t actually want the real world. Even if they think they do and everyone’s like, ‘yeah, cool, live music!’ if you actually look at actual numbers of things, everyone’s gravitating towards the shimmery perfected Photoshop world.”

UPDATE: Grimes posted a clarification of some of her comments to Twitter:

Listen to the full conversation below.

Grimes recently revealed the release date of her long-awaited new album Miss_Anthropocene, and shared a new single, “So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth.”