Grimes‘ next album is finally ready for takeoff, but don’t expect any songs about ex Elon Musk — yet.
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After announcing her first full-length in six years, an LP titled Psy Opera, the alternative pop singer-songwriter guested on the Sunday (Oct. 11) episode of Swiftologist’s Proto Pop podcast and revealed that the music is entirely conceptual and heavily inspired by her relationship to artificial intelligence. She did, however, share that the album will come in two parts, and that the second will feature way more insight into her personal life.
“The second album is 100% personal,” Grimes said. “But I really didn’t want any of this [first album] to be about Elon. Not at all.”
She added that the personal material “just couldn’t come first,” because she felt it was more important to lead with the technology themes in the first half of her Psy Opera era. That said, the musician also remarked that her “only regret about this album” is that she didn’t blend the biographical and conceptual more across the two discs.
“I sort of wish I had a bit more of the emotions on this side and a bit more computer on the other side,” she said. “Overall, though, it’s about being even more traumatized by the late-stage empire than I am about other things.”
Grimes discussed Psy Opera — which she previously talked about during an April chat with Interview — a few days prior on social media, sharing a video trailer mixing futuristic visuals with biblical language. “In the beginning was the word,” a voice-over states. “And the word was God … Artificial light rivaled the sun, and God said: ‘Conquer the heavens.'”
Also on Proto Pop, the artist emphasized that she only used generative AI on one track on Psy Opera, and that her intention was more about exploring the complexities of the technology rather than endorsing it. “I wanted to bring everyone through my journey of getting so dark and nihilistic … I was going through the trial in my personal life, and I was also kind of going through a trial in public,” she said. “For literal years, I just woke up in abject terror every morning. It was like, ‘I’m guilty of some new thing outside and inside at every point in my life every day for years.'”
Psy Opera comes more than half a decade after Grimes dropped her previous album, Miss Anthropocene, which debuted at No. 32 on the Billboard 200. It’ll also mark her first LP since splitting from Musk, with whom she shares three children.
It hasn’t been an easy ride separating from the world’s wealthiest man — and one of the most powerful people in tech and politics — with Grimes at different points in the past few years calling out her ex-partner for custody issues or for bringing their oldest child to publicly meet President Donald Trump in February 2025.
But on the podcast, Grimes brought up her recent interest in historical women who’ve had their reputations intertwined with powerful men and how she sees herself in their ranks.
“Everyone’s like, ‘Are you so sad that you are now so defined by a man?'” she said. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know, I feel like I’m one of the first women in history who can transmute this into art in a way.’ I welcome the situation.”
Watch Grimes’ full interview with Swiftologist and check out her video introduction to Psy Opera below.