It’s fitting that Grimes decided to drop a song about climbing mountains called “REALiTi” at the same time I’ve been out here in Los Angeles reuniting with friends, hiking and largely ignoring social media in order to reconnect to exactly that. (Spoiler alert: There is life beyond the confines of The Internet. But! This isn’t going to be a LiveJournal post, so I’ll save that for another thinkpiece.)
The last time we checked in with our wondrous Canadian dream-pop darling, she was surprising us with “Go,” a song she originally pitched for the new Rihanna record. And over the weekend, the singer decided to give her fans yet another surprise — this time in the form of a video for an unreleased demo from early 2013. Hey, we’ll take it!
After a snappy start, the lush electronic track sees the singer-songstress wrapping her ethereal voice around warm synth pulsations, resulting in a rather hypnotizing little sonic escape…the opposite of reality, ironically.
The accompanying video features both tour footage and copious amounts hair-flippage from the tangerine coiffed chanteuse in exotic locations all over the world.
She explains the situation best in the song’s description on YouTube:
since this is no longer gonna be on the album, I’m releasing it as a special thank you to everyone in Singapore, KL, Manila, Jakarta, HK, Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Seoul, Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo who came out to the shows! It was an honor to play with a bunch of amazing bands and travel to places I would never otherwise be able to go
This song was never finished. its a demo from ~ the lost album ~, recorded early 2013. i lost the ableton file, so its not mixed or mastered. i tried to doctor the mp3 into a listenable state, but it was poorly recorded in the first place and never meant to be heard by anyone, so its a bit of a mess haha.
It’s really a shame this one got lost. But despite the lack of mixing and mastering, it’s still a dreamy delight in its own right. Thanks for this sweet dose of reality, Grimes!
