Grimes Scraps New Album and Starts Anew

BY Alex HudsonPublished Sep 12, 2014

Do you have slightly mixed feelings about Grimes' new single, "Go"? If so, you're not the only one.

"Go" was famously written for (and rejected by) Rihanna, and the New York Times notes that Claire Boucher attended a songwriting bootcamp. When Grimes recorded her own version of the track, the reaction wasn't all that she had hoped. "It upsets a lot of my fans, and I get why it upsets them," she told the publication. "Everybody was like, 'Oh, Grimes is pandering to the radio.'"

This came about as Grimes revealed she scrapped the recording sessions of her upcoming new album. She admitted, "It sucked, so I threw it out and started again."

She had been recording reclusively in Vancouver, but she's now working in Los Angeles using a portable studio that she purchased with her album advance. These days, she's "hanging out with people and bouncing ideas off my friends. I'm just making way more music."

Last year, Grimes signed a management deal with Roc Nation, and it seems that the widespread exposure might be getting to her. Whatever the case, we've evidently still got a while to go before she releases the follow-up to 2012's beloved Visions.

In related news, she had this to say about her recent refusal to do the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: "I tried to do the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in a way that I thought was good, and all these people with ALS were like, 'You're the worst person ever.' I was crying for days."

On a slightly more lighthearted note, some fans are campaigning for the release of Grimes' divisive Boiler Room set.

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story indicated Grimes abandoned her new album due to the negative reaction of "Go." According to Grimes' press team, this was not the case.

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