Grimes' new album compared to Smashing Pumpkins and Beyoncé

Grimes’ highly-anticipated sixth studio album has been compared to seminal releases by both Smashing Pumpkins and Beyoncé.

During a conversation for a new cover feature with Vanity Fair, interviewer Devin Gordon noted that the upcoming “space opera”-themed album, ‘Book 1’ was Grimes’ “‘Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness’ with a hint of ‘Lemonade’.”

In the interview, the yet-to-be-released track ‘Swan Lake’ is mentioned along with its lyrics “Despite all my rage/I am still just a doll in a cage” an ode to the Smashing Pumpkins’ track ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’ and to Grimes’ teenage hero Billy Corgin.

In comparing the album to ‘Lemonade’ the writer shared that ‘Book 1’ was “partly inspired by a theory of [Elon] Musk’s: that she’s a simulation.”

Grimes told Vanity Fair: “We keep having this conversation where E’s like, ‘Are you real? Or are we living in my memory, and you’re like a synthesized companion that was created to be my companion here?’ ”

She added: “The degree to which I feel engineered to have been this, like, perfect companion is crazy.”

The cover story also revealed that Grimes and Musk have had a second child together.

“Whatever is going on with family stuff, I just feel like kids need to stay out of it, and X is just out there,” she told Vanity Fair.

She continued: “I mean, I think E [Musk] is really seeing him as a protégé and bringing him to everything and stuff.… X is out there. His situation is like that. But, yeah, I don’t know.”

It subsequently transpired that Boucher and Musk had a baby girl last December using a surrogate mother. “She’s a little colicky too,” Grimes said of her daughter, Y (she did not disclose the child’s full name).

The Canadian artist and the SpaceX CEO welcomed their first son, X, in May 2020 before confirming last September that they had “semi-separated but still love each other”.