Robot Propaganda And J-Pop Werewolves: Every Grimes Song, Ranked
To be honest, they're all good, pretty much.
There’s two very different versions of Grimes: the one in interviews and on social media, and the Grimes on her albums.
The former is — let’s be honest — pretty exhausting. From naming her firstborn child a mess of unintelligible letters, to claiming that workers at her husband’s Tesla factories don’t want to unionise, Grimes in-person is a mix of Reddit-style humour and capitalist bullshit.
But there’s a reason that we keep going back to her; why she still makes headlines. At the end of the day, all that nonsense tossed aside, she’s still one of our most exciting and original popstars. Shifting from underground auteurist weirdo to pop behemoth, she hoovers up influences and tones like a glittering goth Kirby, in the process creating a singularly distinctive, sharp-edged discography that’s all of her own.
To that end, here’s a complete ranking of every one of her songs, from the silly to the sublime.
#71. ‘Laughing and Not Being Normal’
An entree rather than a proper course, ‘Laughing and Not Being Normal’ is only barely a song. As the Art Angels opener, it’s a neat taste of what’s about to come. As a track stripped of its context, it’s a nice bit of nothing.
#70. ‘Life In The Vivid Dream’
The soundtrack for a videogame cutscene — short, slight and forgettable.
#69. ‘Easily’
In retrospect, Grimes has always been pretty harsh on Art Angels. In truth, it’s not a bad record — it’s a pretty serviceable album with some incredible songs but an aimless back half. ‘Easily’ is the track that signals that shift from focus to flab — the pivot point on which the record’s charms turn and weaken. It’s not very good.
#68. ‘Go’
The first taste of Grimes post-breakout, ‘Go’ was rightly trashed for sounding like the Rhianna reject that it actually was. In retrospect, it sounds even less imaginative and interesting than when it first came out. It’s dull — and there aren’t many Grimes songs you can say that about.
#67. ‘Belly of the Beat’
Sweet but insubstantial.
#66. ‘Know The Way’
Spa music.
#65. ‘Venus Fly’ (feat. Janelle Monae)
Listen, I love Janelle as much as the next sensible person. But she just doesn’t work on this track. Her vocal performance is too airy; the song around her too wispy and dull. In fact, that might be the true crime of Art Angels: that it somehow manages to waste one of our finest popstars.
#64. ‘World Princess, Pt. II’
No song sounds more like the filler songs tween YouTubers use to start their vlogs without actually being one.
#63. ‘Symphonia IX (My Wait Is U)’
Half-hearted.
#62. ‘Ophia’
A sonic doodle.
#61. ‘Hallways’
Bubbles forming in the corner of someone’s mouth. Distinct, but a little frothy.
#60. ‘Sardaukar Levenbrech’
One of the true outliers in Grimes’ entire discography, ‘Sardaukar Levenbrech’ is a short attempt at chameleonic music-making, a singer trying to lose themselves entirely in someone else’s style. It works, kinda.
#59. ‘Dragvandil’
I genuinely struggle to get through that crunchy, wet noise that kicks off the song. Genuinely. It’s my anti-ASMR. Rest of the song’s pretty good though!
#58. ‘Outer’
Like the residue of a dream that hangs around in your head, just after you’ve woken up.
#57. ‘IDORU’
Blaring and a little insincere.
#56. ‘Intro/Flowers’
The menu music for an Animal Crossing game where all the villagers are dying of some horrendous disease.
#55. ‘My Sister Says The Saddest Things’
Twelve snare drums, kicked down the stairs.
#54. ‘Feyd Rautha Dark Heart’
A piece of paper being folded in on itself, over and over again.
#53. ‘Zoal, Face Dancer’
Dark Souls-ass name, good-ass song.
#52. ‘Gambang’
Is this a cute Grimes song? In fact, is this Grimes’ only cute song?
#51. ‘Artangels’
Perhaps the closest that Grimes ever came to writing a festival-style banger, this is Charli XCX with all the skin shaved off. Hulking and bloody, but also determinedly optimistic.
#50. ‘Infinite Love Without Fulfillment’
A warm-up round, sure, but one of the most successful and exciting warm-up rounds in Grimes’ career. The sound of an artist priming themselves for something huge.
#49. ‘Butterfly’
A dead body wrapped up in silk scarves.
#48. ‘New Gods’
Shattering.
#47. ‘Shadout Mapes’
The soundtrack for a SNES boss battle, where the boss is a lumbering collection of all of your personal neuroses. It’s weird, is what I’m saying.
#46. ‘Omegas’
Link the chain of symbols that makes up its title, ‘Omegas’ is a rollicking, incomprehensible thing — for better and for worse.
#45. ‘Darkseid’
Named after a DC supervillain, ‘Darkseid’ is a reasonably good song that makes the fatal error of overwhelming its guest feature. Not as trim and to the point as it should be, sadly.
#44. ‘Visiting Statue’
As much a Gregorian chant as an indie pop song, this strange monolith eventually falls apart on itself entirely, becoming a glitching series of beats.
#43. ‘Hedra’
Perhaps the most experimental track in Grimes’ entire back catalogue, ‘Hedra’ provides a glimpse of the possible world where she stayed in the underground, rather than becoming one of the biggest popstars on the planet.
#42. ‘Beast Infection’
Terrible title. Pretty good song.
#41. ‘Before the Fever’
The most romantic song on Miss Anthropocene, ‘Before the Fever’ is a swirling love letter arranged out of smoke.
#40. ‘River’
If you squint at it sideways, this is almost a regular old acoustic ballad. Also, a clear rip-off of the work of one of Grimes’ idols, Nicole Dollanganger.
#39. ‘REALiTi’
Throbbing.
#38. ‘4 AEM’
Like a Tool interlude drenched in reverb, ‘4 AEM’ is admirably daggy, and about half as serious as the rest of the tracks on Miss Anthropocene. Also, maybe the source of Grimes’ obsession with diphthongs, one so severe that it would end up influencing how she named her child?
#37. ‘Avi’
You could describe literally any Grimes song as ‘haunted’, but this is the one that most clearly earns that title — an M.R. James ghost story turned into a pop song.
#36. ‘Favriel’
Always a delight to hear Grimes messing about with stringed instruments.
#35. ‘Grisgris’
Grimes has always had a fascination with the regimental, and ‘Grisgris’ is a marching song of sorts; this big, clunking thing, full of strange and uniform energy.
#34. ‘Devon’
Angelo Badalamenti, eat your heart out.
#33. ‘Crystal Ball’
A phone ringtone with a miniature heartbreak nestled right in the centre of it.
#32. ‘Swan Song’
Sticky and plastic, like a child’s bouncing ball.
#31. ‘Color of Moonlight (Antiochus)’ [feat. Doldrums]
Perhaps the most deceptively hard-edged song on Visions, ‘Color of Moonlight’ borrows from the echoing majesty of fellow gamechanger John Maus to create something thick and unnerving. Underrated.
#30. ‘World Princess’
A puddle of lava, slowly cooling into something dark and hard.
#29. ‘Caladan’
Perhaps the darkest that Grimes ever got, ‘Caladan’ is the sound of something terrifying and cruel climbing up your bedroom walls at night.
#27. ‘Violence’
An Akira-style monster formed out of all of the sweat and bodily fluid shed on a dancefloor.
#26. ‘Vanessa’
The song off EP Darkbloom that most clearly alludes to the highs that Grimes would hit with the release of Visions only a year later, ‘Vanessa’ is unassuming but effective.
#25. ‘Dream Fortress’
More a slow, juddering climax than a pop song, ‘Dream Fortress’ takes three tantalising minutes to even properly get going.
#24. ‘Circumambient’
A song that keeps walking in circles around itself.
#23. ‘Be a Body’
On which Grimes shows off the fullest extent of those smokey, lisped tones, with the vocal performance of her entire career.
#22. ‘Venus in Fleurs’
Blood-soaked.
#21. ‘So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth’
Ten miles of sun-baked tarmac on the surface of Mars.
#20. ‘Weregild’
This barking, bizarre thing, a song that takes a good thirty seconds to fall into sync with itself, and even then always feels about half a second away from total collapse.
#19. ‘You’ll Miss Me When I’m Not Around’
A promise, or a threat?
#18. ‘Skin’
Grimes isn’t exactly known for her subtlety, but this track creeps up on you, slowly working out algorithms on the blackboards of your mind before throwing itself into sharp and abrupt focus.
#17. ‘Vowels = Space and Time’
A dance track with the chorus taken out. Spectral and strange.
#16. ‘Urban Twilight’
There’s a moment in those first few seconds where Grimes’ voice honks like a frog being fed through autotune, and it’s the most immediately satisfying flourish of the entire song.
#15. ‘Pin’
A box of treasure bobbing to the top of the lake in a swamp, ‘Pin’ is proof that few have the ability to make an entire song shift on a dime like Grimes. It does a thousand things, and it does them all very, very fast.
#14. ‘Eight’
If you tasked the android in Alien with writing a pop song, it’d sound like this one.
#13. ‘Nightmusic’ (feat. Majical Clouds)
Majical Clouds, the Canadian dream-pop band headed by Devon Welsh, is a perfect fit for Grimes’ lopsided, whipsmart style, and on this track, the acts pool their talent together to tremendous effect.
#12. ‘Delete Forever’
A great artist always eventually starts messing with their own formula, and that’s exactly what Grimes does on ‘Delete Forever’, an almost-country song dropped right into the middle of a throbbing, alien indie pop record. It’s utterly baffling, but in a way that really works.
#11. ‘Sagrad’
Despite their atmosphere, Grimes songs are rarely ‘cinematic’ — they’re too specific for that; too all-encompassing. But ‘Sagrad’ is a miniature, twinkling soundscape that conjures up visions of entire worlds and stories. Sink into it.
#10. ‘Rosa’
An early indication that Grimes was interested in one day writing straight-up-and-down pop songs, ‘Rosa’ is simple, unadorned and handsome. Almost like a Nirvana ballad, or Madonna on a quiet day.
#9. ‘Flesh Without Blood’
A set of glittering cables, let loose and snapping about in the wind.
#8. ‘Christmas Song II (Grinch)’
Five years ago, mostly as a way of keeping herself busy over a boring festive period, Grimes released a Christmas song. She probably wouldn’t appreciate it being included on this list, let alone being ranked so high — in the description for the song’s YouTube video, she calls it “not a serious piece of art in any capacity and not an official Grimes release.” But that’s just proof of the exciting things that can happen when musicians untie themselves from their personas. A demented, dadaist joke that includes a voice reading studio head Amy Pascal’s leaked emails about the Cameron Crowe film Aloha, it’s a mess. But a glorious one.
#7. ‘My Name Is Dark’
Miss Anthropocene is, in theory, a concept record. For the most part, it doesn’t really sound like one — it’s too lopsided and odd. But on ‘My Name Is Dark’, Grimes does an excellent job of combining character, story and tone, producing a swirling portrait of a walking, living horror.
#6. ‘Genesis’
‘Genesis’ might be the most ethereal song in the Grimes back catalogue. That’s saying something — a little like calling ‘Thunder Road’ Bruce Springsteen’s most rousing — given that all Grimes has ever done is explored the vague and the soft-edged.
It’s the summation of an entire way of making art; this snaking, silk-covered thing, as intoxicating as it is utterly demented. People have spent years trying to replicate the odd pleasures of this song, and none of them have even gotten close.
#5. ‘California’
Before Art Angels dropped, Grimes said that the album reflected her obsession with dude-bro guitar. That’s not obvious throughout the entire piece, but it’s definitely obvious on ‘California’, with its Blink-182-inspired chorus and its strange, flattened production.
It’s a pair of Hot Topic leggings being run through a meat grinder, scented with a bottle of Lynx. Strange, but essential — the case of a musician inhabiting a world and a sound that by all appearances they wouldn’t usually touch with a ten-foot barge pole.
#4. ‘Scream (feat. Aristophanes)’
Grimes’ guest spots work best when she picks an artist who matches her bizarre energy without feeling just like a weaker Grimes clone (we’re looking at you, I’m afraid, Janelle). Aristophanes fits that bill to a tee, providing a shrieking and giddy vocal performance that Grimes sensibly steps way back from.
It’s a unique case of an artist handing over their album to an outsider, and it really works — particularly in the case of the rest of Art Angels, a record that’s biggest flaw is its own insularity.
#3. ‘We Appreciate Power’
An attempt to write a propaganda anthem from the point of view of an insidious artificial intelligence, ‘We Appreciate Power’ is one of those rare cases in which a concept can hone the visceral pleasures of a song rather than totally overwhelming them.
You can either enjoy it as a piece of whipsmart world-building and story-telling. Or you can enjoy it as one of the most immediate, bombastic songs in the entire Grimes back-catalogue. Either way works.
That it wasn’t included in the final tracklist for Miss Anthropocene is a mystery that I still feel like I can’t get my head around.
#2. ‘Kill V. Maim’
Drawing on the horrors of the Dark Souls games that are at the core of Grimes’ creative universe, ‘Kill V. Maim’ is a loping nightmare. Part hype song, part J-pop werewolf, the thing’s as hard as she ever went; a steel-jaw trap made out of coloured plastic.
Treat it as a refutation of the idea that she’s some one-trick pony. This song exists in a world entirely of its own. Oh, and when performed live, it’s another kind of monster entirely — legitimately scary, blared out at 10,000 decibels. We do not put enough respect on its name.
#1. ‘Oblivion’
In the video for ‘Oblivion’, Grimes wanders around a football game, headphones clamped onto her head, singing along to a song that nobody else can hear. She’s alone, but not for long: quickly the drunken men around her start trying to join in, performing for a camera that has — for perhaps the first time in their lives — not been trained to depict them flatteringly.
It’s a stroke of genius that only gets smarter as it goes on, with the whole clip exploding into this toxic, booze-soaked party, in the centre of which sits a singer quietly humming the song that has defined her entire career.
‘Oblivion’ and its accompanying clip aren’t just as good as Grimes ever got. They’re as good as American indie pop has been for literal decades. Legitimate perfection.
Joseph Earp is a staff writer at Junkee. He tweets @Joseph_O_Earp.