{"id":175552,"date":"2026-10-13T10:00:47","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T14:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=175552"},"modified":"2026-10-13T10:03:04","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T14:03:04","slug":"grimes-secret-psy-opera-pop-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/10\/13\/grimes-secret-psy-opera-pop-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Grimes\u2019s Secret Psy Opera<\/em> Pop-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Grimes

Photograph by Paul McAdory.<\/p><\/div>\n

Word had reached me early. Grimes, the impish thirty-eight-year-old Canadian musician and mother to three of Elon Musk\u2019s fourteen children\u2014who in 2018 changed her legal name from Claire Boucher to <\/span>c<\/span><\/i>, as in constant, as in the speed of light\u2014would, at 10 P.M.<\/small> on the night of October 10, following a surprise day-of announcement online, dance behind the decks, deejay, and play some music from her first album in more than six years in the backyard of my favorite bar, Bed-Stuy\u2019s Singers. <\/span><\/p>\n

The gay cocktail joint is known for programming wily meme-birthing events like \u201cTwinks vs. Dolls\u201d and for the variable pace of its servers, who, as queer people, reserve the right to queer the amount of time it takes to mix a drink. Tonight those servers were prepped for the influx of scenesters who\u2019d heard about the not-so-secret event in advance, as well as the fans who found out about it organically when Grimes tweeted, at 8:06 P.M.<\/small>, \u201cshould I go to singers ?\u201d One reply: \u201cCome to Saudi Arabia.\u201d Another: \u201cIf you go, low profile and incognito. Lotta bozos out there!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Grimes has rarely been incognito.<\/span> The electronic musician once claimed to have undergone a surgery that had given her elfin ears. She has dressed like a Tolkien character crossed with a cyborgian wastrel and may have written an unpublished children\u2019s book<\/a> titled <\/span>Transhumanism for Babies<\/span><\/i>. She sings in a hyperdimensional language, believes AI is sentient, and once dedicated<\/a> a song to \u201cNorth Korea\u2019s Moranbong, an all female military band that plays state-sanctioned performances.\u201d<\/span> She<\/span> has also released at least two of the finest albums of this century, and by 8:30 P.M.<\/small>, the yard behind Singers was flush with svelte, hoop-earringed zillennials who\u2019d arrived to watch her comeback and find out if she\u2019d made a third.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So far, it was hard to\u00a0say if the new album would reach those heights. A day earlier, a press release had previewed the new album,<\/span> Psy Opera\u2014<\/span><\/i>which promised to cover e<\/span>verything from \u201cthe AI debate to immoral wars to a bad ex to looksmaxers to the importance of religion\u201d\u2014but whose abrasive first single, \u201cAccelerando,\u201d a collaboration with the producer VADAKIN<\/small>, opens by rhyming \u201cOppenheimer Barbie\u201d with \u201cAmerican lobotomy.\u201d (As I would later learn from Grimes herself, she didn\u2019t think the world of the track either: \u201c\u2018<\/span>Accelerando\u2019 is honestly probably the worst song on the album,\u201d which was, she told me, her \u201cmasterwork,\u201d \u201ca work of genius.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

The bar was populated by a host of quippy, tank-topped zoomers who fed me lines like \u201cI hope she still smells like nickels,\u201d citing the infamous leaked text<\/a> sent to Grimes from her fellow lightning-rod and sometime-enemy, the Tel-Aviv-based rapper Azaelia Banks. But as partygoers continued to pour into the venue, many expressed ambivalence about the pop star.<\/span> \u201cI guess I\u2019m only here because I would\u2019ve wanted to be when I was twelve,\u201d said one of a dozen gay men with dark curly hair and a trim black mustache.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Three of the author\u2019<\/span>s mustachioed friends. Photograph by Paul McAdory.<\/p><\/div>\n

T<\/span>he crowd\u2019s fondness for the luminary behind playful, prescient songs like \u201cOblivion\u201d and \u201cDelete Forever\u201d was tempered by a lingering, potent skepticism generated by her since-lapsed alliance with Musk and her appease-the-machine-gods technooptimism. \u201cI was on the music board of 4chan in eighth grade,\u201d another man said. \u201cThey hated <\/span>Art Angels<\/span><\/i>, and I was on there defending her, and then she spat in our faces.\u201d A lyric from the 2015 album\u2019s standout single, \u201cFlesh Without Blood,\u201d summarized the prevailing sentiment: \u201cNo, I don\u2019t see the light I saw in you before.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Some, however, were ready to see the light anew. \u201cI would love for Grimes to redeem herself,\u201d said a diminutive thirty-year-old by the bar, which was serving an electric-blue \u201cMezcalerando\u201d to celebrate the single. (One woman\u2019s review: \u201cIt tastes like a failed technoutopian project.\u201d) \u201cI would love for Singers to become a playground for artists to redeem themselves\u2014Nicki Minaj next!\u201d The bar seemed like \u201cthe place to see and be seen,\u201d an off-duty publicist agreed, before rattling off other big names recently spotted at Singers: \u201cJulia Fox, Mamdani, and now Grimes.\u201d The publicist, for her part, had never entirely left Grimes\u2019s corner. \u201cI\u2019ve been into Grimes since I was wearing skinnies in 2012,\u201d she said. \u201cShe has her finger on a pulse. Whose pulse, I don\u2019t know.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Grimes

Photograph by Paul McAdory.<\/p><\/div>\n

In the lead-up to the show, I had been texting with Grimes\u2019s publicist about the possibility of an interview\u2014I\u2019d wanted to ask about her <\/span>hiatus, her influences for the album, and her fraught relationship with AI. Famously, in <\/span>2023<\/span><\/a>, Grimes allowed musicians to freely use an AI clone of her voice and split royalties with her team fifty-fifty. But she also doesn\u2019t use AI to produce her music\u2014and insists, for instance, on working with human dancers in her music videos.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had been told, first, that she was doing no interviews, then, that she might be game for a phone call later, and finally, minutes before the show was set to commence, that she would likely give me \u201ca quote\u201d afterward. I was surprised, then, when the publicist, after wristbanding me in an alley beside the bar, told me I would have five minutes with Grimes <\/span>in the living room of what\u2019s unofficially known as The Singers House\u2014the building next door to the venue, which shares its yard. I was even more surprised when that <\/span>allotment<\/span> ballooned<\/span> into a much longer conversation with a follow-up later in the night.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inside, VIPs and Singers personnel milled about holding cans of Asahi and dipping gingerly into crudit\u00e9 platters. Grimes was speaking excitedly from her perch on a gray sofa, her pink and silver vest shimmering under the overheads, the area around her eyes painted with violet, bruise-like makeup. Up close I noticed a life-size strawberry pendant hanging from her neck. \u201cThis is from a Chinese brand that I got into because they do prosthetic limbs\u2014like fashion prosthetic limbs,\u201d she said, \u201cwhich I just think is so futuristic.\u201d She clarified, \u201cI have two legs, so I can\u2019t get a limb.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The album, she said, came out of a desire to capture the \u201cemotion of being thrust into the future\u201d by the pace of technology. \u201cI think one of the things I really want to embody with this record\u2014and I think what people don\u2019t understand\u2014is it\u2019s not just cerebrally or intellectually about what\u2019s happening. It\u2019s about feeling it. And it\u2019s a new feeling. I think it\u2019s like, we\u2019re innovating in emotions,\u201d she explained. \u201cEven though I think people had this before, with the Industrial Revolution, this is another level. It\u2019s an inconceivable level of acceleration, and I think the emotional response to it is a new one. And I think it\u2019s also horrible and terrible, and also addictive and exciting, you know?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Grimes recently told<\/a> the podcaster Swiftologist that years of waking up \u201cin abject terror\u201d about various plots to cancel her had, ultimately, proved freeing: the worst has already happened.<\/span> And<\/span> in conversation, the musician was unguarded and jocular, willing to pursue her trains of thought to unexpected destinations, from the Pope (\u201cI love the Pope,\u201d she said four times), to the possibility of publishing the poetry she wrote during her hiatus: \u201cI kind of wanna get beautiful women to read it, maybe nude. I kind of wanna do really advanced pornography or something.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While she may not publish her poetry anytime soon, she is planning to publish a manifesto, tentatively titled \u201cGesserit,\u201d after the all-female enclave of superpowerful witches who plot to bring about the birth of a messiah in Frank Herbert\u2019s <\/span>Dune<\/span><\/i>. The work, which Grimes is writing alongside two Zoomers\u2014one named Lillian Tara and another who wishes to remain anonymous\u2014is an investigation of the moral education of Gen-Z, whom she calls \u201cthe first humans ever in all of history to be raised by atheists.\u201d (An early \u201cpop\u201d version of the manifesto may come out with the album, with a longer, more academic version to follow.)<\/span><\/p>\n

She hadn\u2019t read the work of her fellow countrywoman Anne Carson<\/a>; when I recommended <\/span>Autobiography of Red, <\/span><\/i>she joked: \u201c<\/span>Red<\/span><\/i>? Like Taylor Swift? That\u2019s her best record.\u201d But she had read <\/span>Accelerando <\/span><\/i>(<\/span>the 2005 Charles Stross novel from which the single takes its name)\u2014or at least, part of it. \u201cIt\u2019s a great novel, which I haven\u2019t finished because it\u2019s a nightmare,\u201d she told me, \u201cbut it\u2019s a masterpiece.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The single \u201cAccelerando\u201d was \u201cbased on how I felt when I learned about autonomous capital,\u201d she added, referring to a complex set of ideas that, roughly, posit capitalism as a kind of intelligence making temporary use of human beings until it can produce a singularity. \u201cI think Nick Land invented it first, but I first encountered it with that book, and it just struck this fear into me\u2014I was just hit with this deep fear and excitement about the future at the same time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At times, Grimes\u2019s conversational freedom elicited input from her publicist, Mitchell Jackson, a tall, bespectacled flack whose client roster includes Adam Friedland, Clavicular, and Candace Owens, and whom the <\/span>New York Times<\/span><\/i><\/a> dubbed \u201cthe publicist on call for controversy.\u201d When she brought up Land, the neoreactionary accelerationist philosopher who coined the term \u201cDark Enlightenment\u201d and is beloved by the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Jackson chimed in: \u201cLet\u2019s not discuss Nick Land.\u201d And when I asked about her long-standing affinity for elves, she turned to Jackson: \u201cYou\u2019re going to hate my answer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAs I said,\u201d he responded, \u201cyou\u2019re allowed to say whatever you want as long as you know the consequences.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTolkien always said that one of the worst things the Nazis did was destroy, like, the aesthetics of the Nordic people, you know?\u201d <\/span>I did not know, not really, not about this and not about much of the remainder of her answer to this question: <\/span><\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s really causing a lot of nihilism and horror in society\u2014the fact that so much of Western and Northern European culture is now just being associated with this horror, especially when a lot of people from these cultures fought against it. I started getting into the elf stuff because I got very canceled, very heinously, early in my career for wearing a bindi\u2014which I shouldn\u2019t have done, but my stepdad\u2019s Indian, so, you know, I liked wearing a bindi. But I was like, \u2018Yo, okay, I\u2019ll just get into, like, white people culture.\u2019 And then I started realizing in America that\u2019s very fraught. I\u2019m from Canada. I think there\u2019s a lot less trauma around this there.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Healing, she said, was the order of the day, and her pointy-eared aesthetic might aid that process: \u201cIf the way that the culture was before causes people trauma, then I think there\u2019s new ways to do it, such as: cyber elf.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(At this point, Jackson interjected to note that he \u201calways would prefer if a client doesn\u2019t say the words \u2018white culture,\u2019 \u201d leading Grimes to specify that she was referring to Western and Northern European cultures.)<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Photograph by Paul McAdory.<\/p><\/div>\n

If, before the show, there were already<\/span> rumblings of discontent typical of an event involving a fallen celebrity artist on the comeback and a flock of bitchy gay men and the women who associate with them, this was perhaps not the ideal conversation to assuage their misgivings.<\/span> But conversation was not what the crowd had come for. They\u2019d come for<\/span> Psy Opera<\/span><\/i>, which Grimes described as <\/span>\u201ca double album probably\u201d of \u201ccerebral, lyric-oriented\u201d tracks that sound like \u201cgirly Radiohead.\u201d \u201cI suffered a lot to make this,\u201d she added. \u201cI hope people appreciate it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At various points in our conversation, Grimes inventoried her concerns with AI and the tech scene more broadly. <\/span> \u201cI keep trying to show my AI friends my art or other people\u2019s art,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I started realizing that they don\u2019t like<\/i> art, which was shocking to me.\u201d As Grimes spoke, moving her hands through the air, she looked as though she was still reeling from the revelation.<\/span> \u201cThey don\u2019t like music, dance,\u201d she went on. They \u201cdon\u2019t necessarily feel<\/i> art. Which is, like, fine. I don\u2019t judge people for not feeling art.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Photograph by Peeg.<\/p><\/div>\n

But for all their grumbling, if anyone wanted to feel her art, this crowd definitely did. When Grimes took the stage, her long platinum locks shone in the swiveling stage lights. She could have been cosplaying as the anime elf Frieren. In a normal word, she looked angelic. In the argot of homosexuals, as one endearing man told me, she looked \u201cso puss-puss McGuss, plucked and pickled.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From the moment she cued the second track, Donna Lewis\u2019s \u201cI Love You Always Forever,\u201d all seemed to be forgiven. I admit that I am the target audience for a Grimes redemption arc; tears come into my eyes remembering how individual lines from her music have filled me with feeling. (\u201cI was only looking for a human to reciprocate,\u201d she sings in \u201cPin,\u201d from <\/span>Art Angels<\/span><\/i>: Genuinely, who isn\u2019t?) Grimes played only two or three of her own songs, including \u201cAccelerando\u201d and another track she said would \u201cnever be released.\u201d She opted instead for an eclectic mix of throwback bangers\u2014Rihanna\u2019s \u201cBitch Better Have My Money\u201d had the at-capacity crowd leaping in delight\u2014and neo-Grimesean dubstep-influenced pop like Ninajirachi\u2019s \u201cFuck My Computer.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Her most inspired selection <\/span>was \u201c212,\u201d the era-defining hit by Azaelia Banks. Grimes threw her body around the small stage and mouthed the lyrics through an implacable smile, as two hundred voices shouted them back to her (\u201cI guess that cunt gettin\u2019 eaten.\u201d) If you\u2019re looking to win back a disgruntled public, having a sense of humor about your cultural legacy doesn\u2019t hurt. At the tail end of her penultimate track, \u201cI Wanna Be Sedated,\u201d she told the crowd: \u201cEveryone should just be calm now. Get eight hours of sleep,\u201d before walking offstage to Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin\u2019s \u201cJe t\u2019aime \u2026 moi non plus.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what people will think of <\/span>Psy Opera<\/span><\/i>, but a woman guiding her sloshed friend into the bar after the show spoke for many, when she stopped me to say, \u201cI\u2019m kinda drinking that Canadian Kool-Aid.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paul McAdory is a writer from Mississippi. He last wrote for <\/em>The Daily about sperm racing<\/a>. He lives in Brooklyn.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cShe has her finger on a pulse. 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