Grimes has claimed that she was only able to succeed in her career because she discarded “everything else” in her life.
Speaking on her ActuallyGrimes Tumblr account, the singer – real name Claire Boucher – opened up about the sacrifices she has had to make in the past. In the lengthy post, she wrote: “Sometimes I completely break down. There is a ton of pressure on me all the time, and a lot of people really hate me and are certainly not meek about letting me know that. If you decide to do something and it’s different from what other people are doing, you will probably make some people very angry and words can be devastating.”
She went on to add: “I lost my family (temporarily), the relationship I had been in for three years, and a lot of my friends because I decided to put my art first. At the beginning I toured with a tent because I was playing shows for like, ten people and not getting paid, so we had nowhere to sleep. Granted, this was incredibly fun but sometimes it got really dark. Especially if you’ve abandoned everything else in your life to the point where if it doesn’t work, you’ll have lost everything.”
Speaking about her motivation, meanwhile, she revealed:
I mean, I think Grimes succeeded because I had to discard everything in my life in order to do it. I was so fucking desperate to make it work, I don’t think I could have possibly allowed it to fail. I can’t stress how powerful the human mind is. If you want something bad enough, you can probably find a way to make it work.
Grimes released her latest album, ‘Visions’, in March of this year. Her fourth LP in two years – following 2010’s ‘Geidi Primes’ and ‘Halfaxa’, and 2011’s ‘Darkbloom’ – the record became one of the year’s most critically acclaimed releases and was voted second in NME’s Albums Of 2012 poll.
Boucher was forced to cancel her European tour due to health issues last month, with her planned run of shows scrapped after she revealed she was suffering from tinnitus.