Lyrics Album

Grimes – Art Angels

Updated

March 27, 2023

Grimes – Art Angels

full Art Angels Lyrics and Tracklist Grimes

Art Angels is the fourth studio album from Canadian artist Grimes. Self-produced and featuring guest appearances from Aristophanes and Janelle Monáe, the album was released to widespread critical acclaim on November 6, 2015. Art Angels sold 11,000 copies in the first week of its release and became Grimes’ highest charting album at the time. It appeared on numerous year-end top ten lists from multiple music publications, and on July 14, 2016, the album was announced as a Short List nominee for the 2016 Polaris Music Prize, awarded annually to honour artists who produced Canadian music albums of distinction for that year.

The name and album cover were revealed on social media on October 19, 2015, accompanied by an announcement of singles, “Flesh Without Blood” and “Life in the Vivid Dream.”

On making Art Angels, Claire Boucher said the album represents an incomplete transition to the contemporary version of Grimes, where technically she no longer has control of the Grimes narrative anymore.

So much of my music is against the people who are trying to take it away from me.

You have to push people and you have to be aggressive or you can’t get your way.

People offering to do your job all the time, it’s just infuriating. Just let me do my fucking job.

I don’t want to be the face of this thing that I built. I want to be the person who built it.

This is the first time Grimes has used “real instruments” for an album, which presented a challenge for her, though it allowed her to take risks both tonally and sonically.

Claire references music she grew up with throughout the album, the first time Grimes has had the opportunity to do so on a studio album.

It’s the first time I’ve had the world at my fingertips.

The album cover shows a banshee portrayed as the planet Earth. She mentions this kind of “fairy woman” who wails before someone’s death or misfortune in the album’s 9th track, “Pin”. You can also hear a representation of her screams in the album’s 3rd track, “Scream”. Her dying aspect with blood tears symbolizes the planet’s struggle to find balance with our endless consumption and exploration, while her third eye stands for her enlightenment in relation to all human race, giving to her a perception beyond ordinary sight. The cover sums up the whole concept of the album, where Grimes is in a constant
conversation with this spiritual figure (known as the planet Earth), showing our disruptive relationship with the place where we were all born.