Rank Grimes' albums

"2- Art Angels (Good but a bit too pop for the die hard Grimes fans)"

good but? there are no "buts" in the greatness of AA. speak for yourself please. there are many "die hard Grimes fans" (yes, I would literally die for grimes) who fucking adore AA as her greatest work. this includes many fans like myself who have been into Grimes since before Visions even came out, love her more ambient work, and evolved with her sound, the way fans of great artists do. not that it took any effort to love AA. it's a masterpiece. and it's not mostly "pop," Visions is actually more "pop" related, as far as Grimes's intentions. but even if AA was "pop," she is respectful of pop and many of her die hard fans love pop, so why would being pop make it automatically less great?

like I said, AA isn't necessarily more pop anyway. or think of it like this- maaaybe it does have more pop related tracks in it- but it also has more noise, industrial, rap, rock and punk in it. AA has more everything in it. AA is the everything bagel (LA style bagel? does that exist?) of albums. if pop is the sesame seeds, maybe there are more sesame seeds in the everything bagel than the sesame bagel (Visions- Montreal style bagel of course) but the sesame bagel only has a few ingredients, so the sesame seeds stand out (pop stands out as a very important ingredient in visions). the everything bagel has so many ingredients that, only someone who is weirdly obsessed with hating sesame seeds (pop) would even notice the sesame seeds, because there is so much of everything (hence the name) in an everything bagel. sesame seeds is only scratching the surface, what about poppy seeds, onions, garlic, even some crazy wack bagels put cheese in them (not my thing- or grimes, as an "herbivore"). point is there is so much variety in the everything bagel. to reduce it to just one of its ingredients shows a lack of appreciation for the art of bagels.

also, in some ways AA is much more "original" than even Visions or her early work. Her very early work is amazing, but if you are aware of her influences, you can almost sum up its sound as Burial + Cocteau Twins (or Panda Bear + Enya, whatever). Hakfaxa, Darkbloom and Visions then build on that, and mix about ten more different music styles that rarely get mixed together- and execute each style perfectly, which would be amazing in itself, but becomes even more amazing the way she blends genres. So her albums each become more original than the last one, more purely "Grimes"- because she adds additional sounds, Mariah Carey, Hildegard von Bingen, and other sounds to that mix she had. With Visions she is already getting to the point where almost no one in history can match her originality- no one else is inspired by that exact mix of wildly different (seemingly- in the eyes of people who are not Claire) artists. But then, AA!! AA is like you took the entire radio dial, every single genre and radio station (not only popular genres like pop, r&b, rock, country, hip hop, but also like, obscure experimental college radio, and classic rock, and oldies, and classical music) and a program was made to randomly mix together every genre that exists and reassemble it as a frankenstein-monster of 14 fucking perfect song creations that express every genre at once. that is AA.

AA mixes about 25 or 30 music styles (at least.) that rarely get mixed together. these styles are not limited to "pop"- they also include rock, hip hop, and even punk and sounds more experimental than Visions. Visions was largely responsible for the sound of indie in the past five years becoming much more wildly diverse. Grimes employed about five to ten different genres in Visions, and because of this, other artists started doing the same, mixing those genres into their work. if Claire had returned after three years with Visions part 2, that would have no longer been original. instead, she surpassed even Visions in originality, quadrupling the number of genres she integrates, from 5-10, to more than 20! NO ONE ELSE CAN DO THAT. okay okay, maybe Prince and Bowie (but they took many more years to evolve that degree of versatility- in fairness, she also has technology they didn't). maybe Michael. maybe the Beatles. maybe Stevie Wonder. maaaybe Bjork. Nina Simone. Miles Davis (and some others working mostly outside the realm of "popular songs"). the list is not long, and it is composed solely of all time legends. many other great artists (even artists like Radiohead and Kanye who are known for changing genres a lot) don't even come close to the variety of styles Grimes has already done. Radiohead's most diverse album in terms of musical style is probably Amnesiac. Kanye's is probably his latest one Life of Pablo. each of those albums have a large number of different sounds. but AA has like ten times more different sounds! plus it's all integrated into perfect songs that inspire dancing and cathartic head banging and everything else all at once.

"here i'm allowed everything all of the time" is a Radiohead lyric that describes what it feels like to listen to AA. you are allowed every sound that exists- Grimes no longer allows any critic to say some sounds are "good" and others "bad"- she shows how every single sound, from "pop" dance tunes to noisy punk rap, can be "good"- the best music ever- if Claire makes it.

like, come on, AA is one of the greatest albums of all time. it might be the greatest album ever made. I can't think of any other albums that are actually better than it, and I know a lot of albums, but i'll focus on a couple of famous ones of recent decades. kid a is not better than art angels. my beautiful dark twisted fantasy is not better than art angels. art angels is a 10, if anything is a 10.

/r/Grimes Thread Parent