Grimes

Canadian electronic artist Grimes was born Claire Boucher in Vancouver, BC. She began recording while studying at McGill University in Montreal in the late 2000s, combining ambient electronics, synth pop, and more experimental inclinations, with her airy vocals floating atop it all and adding a hazy, dream-pop quality to the proceedings. In 2010, she released two albums, Geidi Primes and Halfaxa, on the small Canadian indie label Arbutus Records. Her artistic alias was allegedly taken from the fact that early on Boucher perversely chose the "grime" genre tag for her music on MySpace.com. Grimes remained strictly an underground phenomenon until signed to high-profile British label 4AD, which released her third album, Visions, in 2012. Visions ended up being the record that put Grimes on the mainstream musical map, earning a spot on many best-of-the-year lists and even edging into Billboard's Hot 100 album charts for the U.S. In 2013 it won Canada's Juno Award for Electronic Album of the Year. The album took the blend of pop hooks and dreamy textures she had established with her earlier albums and expanded the template to include hip-hop grooves, techno touches, and more. Her success also helped to strike a blow for the equality of women in electronic music, which hadn't achieved much more gender parity than rock at that time. The follow-up record, 2015's Art Angels, earned even more attention for Grimes, making significant headway in album charts all over Europe as well as North America. The album found Boucher more fully embracing her pop side without abandoning her underground electronic roots, and even tossing left-field touches like country influences into the mix along the way. In 2016, Grimes expanded her audience even further by touring as an opening act for British pop phenomenon Florence and the Machine. Two years later, Grimes was the featured artist on a single by R&B superstar Janelle Monae, "Pynk," and became an unexpected tabloid fixture due to her relationship with tech billionaire Elon Musk.