Grimes’ Hatsune Miku collaboration is filled with love: “I feel really in awe of her, but also protective of her”

T hroughout her career, Grimes has been a frontrunner among Western artists in appreciating and collaborating with East Asian pop acts.

Over the years, she’s woven herself into K-pop lore by interviewing aespa and guesting on LOONA sub-unit yyxy’s ‘Love4eva’, and shown love to Taiwan by enlisting 潘PAN on ‘Art Angels’ track ‘Scream’.

That she’s now teamed up with Japan’s turquoise-pigtailed Vocaloid star Hatsune Miku on ‘Miku-maxxing’, the frenetic lead track from the synthetic pop star’s new ‘Beyond Borders’ project, feels like it was inevitable to happen eventually.

On ‘Beyond Borders Vol.1: Emerge M♡de Miku’, Miku teams up with a range of Western internet-music acts, like George Clanton, Frost Children and Odetari.

The six-track EP is backed by Japan’s culture ministry – as part of a wider global Vocaloid-promoting initiative with media companies Dwango and Nebula17 – a fact that initially threw Grimes when she was first approached about the project.

“It was bizarre, because it was like the government of Japan,” she recalls of the email that landed in her inbox.

“Like, does the president know about this? It’s like the biggest no-brainer of all time: I will definitely collaborate with the government of Japan.” The Vancouver pop auteur – real name Claire Boucher – may not have worked with a Japanese artist prior to Miku, but her love of the country’s pop culture has been well-known.

She fell down the rabbit hole via its visual world, at first falling in love with visual-kei bands like Dir En Grey – while the aesthetic qualities of artists like Yoko Kanno and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu bled into her work, from 2012 breakthrough album ‘Visions’ to the acclaimed ‘Art Angels’.

What Miku – a synthetic voice with no fixed author, whose songs are written by tens of thousands of bedroom producers – stands for conceptually, though, also felt personal to Grimes as an artist.

“I was really jealous when I discovered Miku,” she tells NME when she dials into a video call a few days before ‘Miku-maxxing’’s release.

“It was like a knife in the heart, like, ‘Fuck! I wish I did that so bad.’ If you’re like an introvert and shy, but you want to engage in the art of the pop star girl group – whatever that is – [it’s perfect].

I was just like, ‘Ugh, I was just born too soon so that people had to know who I am.’” She connects the dots between Miku and V-tubers – streamers and creators who hide their identities behind digital avatars.

“I would’ve been a V-tuber,” she adds.

“As the [online] panopticon becomes more oppressive, Miku seems like one of the outlets for sensitive, creative people.” F or the past three years, she’s been thinking along similar lines, asking questions about synthetic artistry and artistic ownership in the virtual realm.