Guess a lot of people are now getting acquainted — or reacquainted — with the music of Grimes.
Apparently Grimes and Elon Musk have been secretly dating — or something like that. The pair ‘went public’ this week at the splashy Met Gala 2018, shocking millions of drooling Musk adherents.
Twitter touted the pair as the latest celebrity romance, with a brainy/tech twist. The pair initially bonded over AI on Twitter, with Musk adoring Grimes’ AI-dystopian video for her recent song pair, ‘Flesh Without Blood/Life in the Vivid Dream”.
This year, the Met Gala’s theme was “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion & The Catholic Imagination.” Accordingly, stars like Katie Perry and Rihanna dressed the part, with Rihanna donning a Pope-inspired outfit and Perry spreading huge white-feathered wings. Grimes wore a space vampire getup, while Musk sported a more conventional white tuxedo variation.
Oh, Grimes also wore a choker constructed out of the Tesla logo. That’s right: a metallic Tesla choker.
Perhaps Grimes was the belle of the ball. The edgy art-pop singer, Claire Boucher, has been ‘big’ for a long time. But in the era of media fragmentation, a lot of people are discovering her music for the first time. And the mainstream is getting curious: Newsweek just published a story called ‘Who is Grimes? Award-Winning Canadian Musician Attends Met Gala as Elon Musk’s Date’.
Business Insider’s piece starts out with ‘Meet Grimes,” while across the pond, the Daily Mail’s article was titled, ‘Who is Grimes?’
Others are reigniting Boucher’s music after years of wandering away. That includes fans that came on board in 2012, particularly around the release of ‘Oblivion’ (hailed by Pitchfork as the greatest song of the decade, by the way).
“At first, I didn’t know what to make of this, because—confession: I had absolutely no idea who Grimes is,” Gizmodo’s Tom McKay admitted.
The net effect: a lot of people are rushing to play some Grimes on platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and Amazon Music Unlimited.
According to preliminary play counts shared with Digital Music News this morning, Grimes streams have surged roughly 2,400% since last week, which is a roughly 25x jump. Indeed, YouTube commenters are even crediting their newfound interest to the Musk relationship. “Elon Musk sent me to Grimes’ channel,” one commenter noted, pointed to earlier tweets from the tech billionaire.