Grimes Lana Del Rey
Grimes (photo by Eli Russell Linnetz) / Lana Del Rey (photo by Chuck Grant)

Lana Del Rey interviews Grimes about her new album, "outrage culture," and more

Someone please check if the internet is broken, because Lana Del Rey has interviewed Grimes. But wait, there’s more. Grimes’ tech entrepreneur boyfriend Elon Musk was on hand for the interview too (though he left after the first, like, few seconds).

They did it for Interview Magazine, and they discussed Grimes’ upcoming album Miss_Anthropocene, religion, “saying stupid shit in the press or tweeting dumb shit,” “outrage culture,” the word “alternative,” and lots more. They did not, however, talk about Grimes’ recent comments on live music. Here are some excerpts:

DEL REY: Do you feel like the songs [on your new album] are more personal, or do they have the overculture weighing on them?

GRIMES: A bit of both. I’m really obsessed with polytheism. I love how the ancient Greeks or the ancient Egyptians lived in this weird anime world where there were just tons of gods that could be anything. It’s like every form of suffering had a representation. I wonder if it almost has a positive psychological effect. If your kid dies in a war, you can literally go speak to War and be like, “Why did you do this?” Or, “I hope you did this for a reason.” There’s a weird philosophical justification for all pain, and there’s an anthropomorphization of every form of pain. In our current society, we don’t even know how to talk about things. So my album’s about a modern demonology or a modern pantheon where every song is about a different way to suffer or a different way to die. If you think about it, god-making or god-designing just seems so fun. The idea of making the Goddess of Plastic seems so fun to me.

DEL REY: It’s a very creative infrastructure to work within.

GRIMES: Yeah. Religion is like the best science fiction. I know a lot of people who are atheist or agnostic, and they just hate religion and can’t see anything good in it. Even if you don’t believe in god or anything, this is incredible art. It’s incredible storytelling, incredible character design, incredible visual art. I know we both love reverb. Imagine going into a church in medieval Europe, and you had only ever heard music as someone playing a lute. You enter a cathedral for the first time, and you hear someone singing through a super long reverb. What a mystical experience that would be.

[…]

GRIMES: I feel ready to totally blow all of my shit up and make something new. I’m in a place of extreme displacement. You know when you just feel like you have a lot to lose? With my last album, I kept getting in trouble for saying stupid shit in the press or tweeting dumb shit. I just run my mouth like a fucking asshole and there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t think before I speak. I try to, but I don’t think in words. I just think in weird pictures.

DEL REY: I get that. For better or worse, when you’re not used to being a super-extroverted person, you end up saying what you said for some reason that’s going to end up being important to you in hindsight. It’s not the easiest, it might be a little messy, but you have to get used to the tumult of the public nature of things.

GRIMES: I was reading yesterday about outrage culture, and for just about every emotionally loaded word that’s in a tweet, the tweet gets 15 percent more interaction. We live in this weird time where we didn’t evolve to engage with this many people, and we didn’t evolve to be observed as much as we’re being observed, or to observe other people as much as we’re observing them. No one is considering the psychological impact of all this crazy technology. Especially since Trump was elected, this is the first time that the general public is fully on the internet. Grandma is on the internet.

DEL REY: I think about that all the time. It’s important to say it out loud. It’s a little bit like the Wild West again in the way that we are learning how to deal with each other on a mass level and an instant, interconnected level. I’ve been trying to create my own blueprint. It’s like, how do you fit into the culture and still live your own life the way you authentically would?

GRIMES: I do think everybody’s going to have to get a lot better at forgiving.

DEL REY: I agree.

Grimes was also interviewed for the same feature by The OA creator/star, Brit Marling. You can read both interviews in full here.