Grimes Reveals First Taste of AI-Inspired ‘Psy Opera’

"Accelerando" comes from pop provocateur's first album in six years

Grimes is back. Today, Claire Boucher revealed “Accelerando,” the first single from her upcoming album Psy Opera after teasing the record with a trailer Thursday. Psy Opera marks her first full-length work in six years.

“From the AI debate to immoral wars to a bad ex to looksmaxers [sic] to the importance of religion, Psy Opera will cover everything Grimes witnessed as a woman of history during her hiatus from pop music,” Grimes said in a statement (via Pitchfork). The pop star first revealed plans for Psy Opera this spring to Interview, but no release date has been announced yet.

A complete track list hasn’t been unveiled either, but Grimes’ conversation with Interview mentioned Psy Opera titles “The Light Ages” and “Eve Is Online,” the latter which was featured in the album teaser trailer. The trailer finds Grimes retelling the Gospel of John in the New Testament with AI embellishments: “On the first day, God created the large language model,” Grimes deadpans.

“Accelerando” recalls bits of Grimes’ last full-length Miss Anthropocene and was co-produced by Vadakin and Grimes. The title may or may not be a reference to the sci-fi short story collection of the same name by Charles Stross; some of the stories concern superintelligence and the purported theory of the technological singularity, so we wouldn’t put it past her.

Grimes’ fifth album Miss Anthropocene was released in 2020. “I totally quit music a couple of years ago,” she told Interview in April. “Everything I’d been going through with the public and my personal life and having kids, I was like, ‘I’m just going to be a stay-at-home mom. Screw this.'” This involves the dissolution from her partner Elon Musk, whom she met in 2018, had three children with, and split from in 2022. She has denounced him for bringing her son X Æ A-Xii to the White House and used Twitter to attempt to contact him for help involving a “medical crisis” concerning one of their children.

Trending Stories

In 2023, as the generative-AI boom first began, Boucher gave her consent to artists who wanted to use her voice in AI music. She said she would split royalties 50/50 “on any successful AI generated song that uses my voice … I have no label and no legal bindings.”

More recently, she’s kept busy producing songs for Adéla, collaborating with Sevdaliza, and featuring on songs created by ex-boyfriend Anyma. According to Interview, Grimes is also reportedly worked on a documentary on machine consciousness called First Contact.