Grimes Thinking Quotations

If you tell someone you're doing something innovative, they'll think you're doing something innovative.

I don't think I know anyone who has a steady job in Montreal.

I think Canadians make a lot of music because we're stuck inside all the time.

My great fear is that I'm the ultimate shallow person. I think about this kind of thing a lot, and about this phenomenon in our culture where people identify themselves with their interests. I've been trying not to think about it too much. It used to really upset me when people called me "witch house."

The way that you present yourself visually totally dictates your audience and everything that anyone thinks about you.

If I think about what other people are thinking when I'm making music, I just can't do it. It's too withheld - I need to go totally over the top, and then kind of clean it up a bit and make it more reasonable after the fact.

I think the internet is kind of redefining what it is to be a teenager. Because there's a lot of media that's aimed at teenagers that other people are getting into. But, conversely, pornography or stuff that's intended for adults is completely readily available to anyone, like teenagers.

I think my music's kind of cold, but I don't know if it's related to the weather. It might be because it's always grey [in Montreal], it's very depressing.

I think one of the reasons I'm successful as a musician is that the first like 30 shows I played, I played with no monitors standing in front of guitar amps in a shitty, smoky warehouse where people were screaming and wasted, knocking over my gear. So shows after that seem pretty easy!

I know texture is really important, but I think texture and stuff precedes songwriting a lot of the time these days.

One thing with Montreal is it's so cold and everyone's so poor and beer's so cheap: if you go to a show you have to brave the weather to get there. So you show up and everyone's soaking wet - there's a sense of 'I trekked through three feet of snow to get here!' I think there's a kind of camaraderie that arises out of that, that's important to me as well.

I think you can hear, when you listen to someone's music, whether or not they're enjoying making it - it's so great to hear music where you can tell the person making it was just having a blast. That's really important to me as far as my process goes. That's probably why my music ends up being so poppy!

The last thing I think about when I'm making music is its reception.

I think a lot of music that's really innovative is not even considered because it was made by people who had a sexual image. And people assume that it's a commodified thing, so it can't be "indie."

You rarely find someone who sings really well and who produces really well; it's a problem, and I just think it's a missing link in the music scene.