Grimes Quotes
Musician
I feel like vocals are to music what portraits are to painting. They're the humanity. Landscapes are good and fine, but at the end of the day everyone loves the Mona Lisa.
The way that you present yourself visually totally dictates your audience and everything that anyone thinks about you.
If I'm a bad mood, I can't go on stage and smile.
It's obviously funny to be a meme, so I could be down with it in that regard, but it also belittles one's art.
Miami is just really fun whenever I go there. It's like this post-apocalyptic Barbie world: everything is pink, and there're palm trees everywhere. But then there are also all these people in crazy sunglasses, warehouses with sick parties where all the girls are covered in spikes and black leather. It's a very weird place.
By the time I'm 50, there is probably going to be a nuclear holocaust. I should just enjoy myself.
I'm tired of being considered vapid for liking pop music or caring about fashion as if these things inherently lack substance or as if the things I enjoy somehow make me a lesser person.
I'm a very nervous, shy person.
I like creating beauty out of scary things.
I'm not good at being, like, a sexy girl.
You don't just have to be influenced by rock, or goth, anymore. It's okay to say, 'My influences are Tin Pan music from Bali and Rihanna.' There are still so many combinations that haven't been done yet.
I listen to a lot of medieval music.
I was incredibly unpopular in high school but also extremely notorious.
I can't censor myself; it's really important for me to say how I feel.
My manager lives on my block; four of the apartments in my apartment complex of seven are people I know. It's a really close-knit community, and almost everyone on these few blocks are artists or graphic designers, because we live right on the cusp of a warehouse district.
Music is a religion to me and my friends.
I like going crazy. And not just for art - I like extremes in general.
It's kind of like I'm Phil Spector, and I'm forcing a young girl to make pop music and perform exhaustively. Except, instead of it being someone else, that girl is also me.
I don't want to have to compromise my morals in order to make a living.
I think I have serious latent Catholic guilt issues.
I start a lot of songs and throw them out because the energy is not right. It's almost like the file becomes cursed. I have to delete it.
I just can't perform well unless I'm wearing jeans.
You rarely find someone who sings really well and who produces really well; it's a problem, and I just think it's a missing link in the music scene.
It's really hard to be on stage and packing your gear when people who just saw you play are in the room, because they all just want to talk to you.
I've seen Animal Collective live, and I suffered permanent hearing loss from that show!
My image seems to be so infantilized, and I don't really know why. It belittles the music.
I truly love 'Gangnam Style.' I guess it's a meme. I feel like it's one of the few times where the meme and the quality combines nicely.
The most valuable live thing for me is when people look like they're having a good time.
From an early age, I knew I would be unhappy if I wasn't doing something creative.
Removing all stimulation around you is a really positive thing in terms of stimulating your creativity.
When I first started out, I was making really slow, psychedelic ambient music because it was all I could do.
I went through my adolescence having this revelatory experience - I can have any music I want, and I can get it immediately. For me and for a lot of people I know, there's this musical eclecticism that happened.
I have an intense desire to constantly make music, and I don't feel that way about anything else.
My favorite music is never the music that anyone else likes, and other people's favorite songs are always my least favorite.
I think if you're good at art, you'll be good at most types of art.
I love a lot of very sentimental music, but I shouldn't necessarily be the person who makes it.
I want to make Grimes a high-fashion sci-fi act.
I'm sad that it's uncool or offensive to talk about environmental or human rights issues.
I'm a super-introverted person.
I get offers to do huge-budget music videos with big production companies all the time, but I have no interest.
I'm tired of being congratulated for being thin because I can more easily fit into sample sizes from the runway.
I'm actually not a particularly negative person, but I feel like most things are better when they're not actualized. The motivation that comes from wanting something is so much more driving of people than actually getting it.
If I went on 'American Idol,' I would definitely be kicked out immediately.
You want people to hate you. If you're just making people happy, you're like Mumford & Sons.
The thing is, I really like working. If I sit around too much, I get really bad anxiety.
Usually I perform with dancers.
If you look at the way people behave at shows, icons are now musicians; they are the people that we worship.
Especially with music, people want confidence.
I'm just very obsessed with Japanese stuff in general.
The thing about music is it's not an obscure pursuit, it's a very natural thing for human beings to do. Once you put in the effort, the learning curve is very fast.
Basically, I'm really impressionable and have no sense of consistency in anything I do.
Most of my music videos were made for under $200.
I'm a very unhealthy person, and Montreal is very cold, and I'm usually sick when I'm there.
I believe the human mind is a very fallible thing, but it's the only thing that I can really know, I guess.
If you focus too much on development of the visual angle, it could be a detriment to what you're doing musically.
My set can get really screamo and aggressive, or it can be ambient and Enya-esque.
I like performing, but I usually get really sick when I'm on tour, and it's just hard.
My dream job would be sitting in a room, cranking out hits for Rihanna.
I think my sound is post-Internet.
There's definitely a solitary aspect to not having a band, and there are times when I wish that I did.
I don't even wear shoes with heels because I hate making a noise when I walk and people looking at me.
There used to be a lot of industry in Montreal, and now there's not, so it's really easy to get huge, empty spaces where you can practice and make music or make art for very, very cheap.
I need to be able to work for 20 or 30 hours in one go in complete darkness, alone with just the computer glow.
I'm not interested in making art unless I'm totally freaked out and worried people are going to hate it.
If you tell someone you're doing something innovative, they'll think you're doing something innovative.
In America there's lot of cool cities, but in Canada there's, like, well, Vancouver, Toronto and Halifax may be cool, but they're so expensive. Montreal is the only city that's affordable but also has buses and culture.
As a producer, I'm trying to challenge myself to just make something that is of a professional quality - not necessarily pop music, but maybe in the sense that Nine Inch Nails is professional quality.
I always wanted to be really experimental.
I'm against spending money to record.
When I'm making a song that's very Grimes, it just feels very insular and it feels weird to have someone else do something on it.
It's interesting to be a front person who is controlling the majority of the sound.
I like to aestheticize every possible thing that can be aestheticized.
I'm not trained in music.
I have a lot of Japanese friends: I grew up in Vancouver, and there's this huge Japanese population over there.
I don't own anything designer.
I want to make an a cappella record to release for free.
I've always been such a nerd.
There are a lot of musicians I've met on Twitter where it was like, 'Hey, I like your music' - and then I ended up meeting them and it turned into a friendship.
I've always been very intense about everything I do.
I'm not, like, a natural performer. It's sort of a thing that I've had to learn to do.
I can tell really early on in a painting if I'm going to toss it or not.
Success, for me, is a song that can deliver shivers.
Fashion can be a really powerful tool, but it's also a place where you can be totally humiliated and have your power taken from you.
I don't think I know anyone who has a steady job in Montreal.