Miss Anthropocene is Grimes' new concept Pantheon; a collection of goddess and demons to replace the current outdated Christian god. We are all living in a simulation and these ethereal beings have come together to program our universe. The albums titular goddess, Miss Anthropocene, is the goddess of climate change. Human destruction of the earth is a subtle theme throughout the album, addressed through a technological and spiritual lens. Each song on the album represents a different goddess/demon, as listed at the end of the article.
Normally I'd write about songs in the order they appear in the album, but as New Gods is referred to as the summary/thesis of the whole album I thought I'd begin with it. The track starts off speaking directly to the "original god", and discusses how little they have done to help the burning earth. This entity we are expected to worship and love despite actually knowing nothing about them, "So I pray, but the world burns. And still, you need to come first". It's time to move on and find some new gods, we need to stop allowing this unjust god to rule our life. In desperation we often seek a higher being "Hands reaching out for new gods".
Grimes wrote this song in response to her friends dying from opioid overdoes. It's about not trashing your friend's memories including not living in despair after they are gone. Sonically this track is the tamest Grimes has ever produced, all based around a simple guitar riff. Some of Gimes' other songs are about her own sexual assault and so she talks about living in a permanent blue and constantly having to go on stage and sing about it. It really captures the feeling of "Live fast die young", never stopping or comprehending. Grimes has stated that she no longer felt anything after the most recent death of her friends, maybe she's yet to process it.
Humans make a spectacle of violence, whether it's war, computer games or martial arts, we live for it. It's our barbaric instinct we all have inside us and no one talks about it. The song can also be interpreted as a discussion of humans hurting mother nature, from the perspective of the Earth; sarcastically encouraging us. This is the only instrumental on the album Grimes didn't write herself. It was brought onto the album last minute to replace “Darq Souls” as it had become "an engineering nightmare to finish".
There are moments in life when you truly couldn't care if you live or died and in a weird way they can be some of the best moments of your life, you are truly free. To play with fire is often used to describe someone doing something risky. But Grimes really pushes this to the next level with the song, it's apathy to the point of no return, so unbelievably clinical. When you end up in one of these downward spirals people try to stop you "I hear they're calling my name", but it just gets to the point when they are distance echo and everyone just gets a bit too much.
In the eyes of the "false" Christian god, suicide is a sin and thus you won't go to heaven if you killed yourself. But in the age of Grimes' new gods/demons, an angel on earth kills herself but still ends up back in heaven: she hasn't managed to escape. I feel the song is an analogy for trying to run away from a problem but no matter what you do finding yourself back in the same position. You can't be reckless to yourself to spite other people, it doesn't work and you won't gain anything, "You'll miss me when I'm not around".
This is possibly the happiest song on the album, a stark contrast to the song before it. It's about loving someone despite knowing it probably won't work out. You can really live in the moment and enjoy life more if you accept it won't last forever. This can also be a dangerous thing, at some points in the lyrics it could be interpreted that the person being sung about is harmful. You shouldn't spend your time in something you don't fully enjoy if you're only chasing highs. "I feel something (How can you be so mean?)"
This genuinely was the hardest albums to write about. I've been listening to this album for well over a year now and I had always just appreciated it from a musical point of view. In the past 13 hours, I've being to question our whole reality. The idea of multiple gods and demons has always fascinated me, but I had never gone into it in such detail. Christianity is such constricting and narrow mined lens to view the world through. Gods, demons and religion are really about perspective and how broad you are willing to take it. Most songs I write about do tend to have a deeper meaning but you can often extract it from just reading the lyrics. For this album, I had to watch as many Grimes interviews as I could find, read up on Polytheism and question my perception of the world. Anyway, good luck and enjoy listening.
