Grimes on the media fallout of Elon Musk union comments: “I was simply unprepared”

"That was a disturbing moment"

Grimes has spoken out about the media reaction to her tweets regarding an attempt to unionise workers at her former partner Elon Musk’s company Tesla.

Last year Grimes, real name Claire Boucher and now known as c, took to Twitter to defend Musk over donations he made to Republican campaigns and said she tried to get Tesla employees to unionise. She argued that donating to Republicans was “the price of doing business in America” in order to get into space, and that he gave much, much more to environmental causes.

She then added that she tried to “instigate [a] union vote so y’all would lay off”, but said the United Automobile Workers (UAW) couldn’t get enough signatures after a plant in Fremont was “abandoned in the last crash”. She tweeted: “Bc of this Tesla doin third party polling to make sure employees r in a good space since majority don’t want union”.

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Elon Musk Grimes
Elon Musk and Grimes

Now in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Grimes has described Musk as “a super-interesting goddamn person” who she “loves”, but added that she was “simply unprepared” for the reaction that followed her union comments.

“I’ve just been wallowing in indie music for, like, a decade,” said Grimes. “I just thought I could keep going along in my funny little way, and then you casually respond to someone in a tweet and it’s on Fox News, and you’re like, ‘Ugh’, you know? That was a very disturbing moment.

“I was like, ‘Oh, I can never tweet about…. I need to watch who I fucking retweet.”

She continued: “People, friends, keep being like, You shouldn’t have to change! But you know what? The world is a bitch. Accept the world. Instead of wishing it was different, figure out what you gotta do and do it.”

Grimes added: “And look, I love him…he’s great.”

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A complaint was filed with the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB) by the UAW in May 2018 claiming that Musk had threatened to strip benefits from workers who supported unionising. In June, Musk tweeted that he is “not against all unions,” while Tesla later stated the company “adhere[s] to the nation’s most stringent labour standards” and respects employees’ decisions on whether to organise.

Meanwhile, a court has green-lit a motion for investors to serve subpoenas to Azealia Banks and Grimes in a lawsuit against Tesla and Elon Musk arguing that tweets he sent about “taking the company private at $420” amounted to fraud.

After dropping the huge comeback single ‘We Appreciate Power‘ last year, Grimes this week shared her new demo ‘Pretty Dark‘ as well as confirming details of new album ‘Miss_Anthropocene‘.

“It’s a concept album about the anthropomorphic Goddess of climate Change: A psychedelic, space-dwelling demon/ beauty-Queen who relishes the end of the world. She’s composed of Ivory and Oil,” wrote Boucher.

She added: “Each song will be a different embodiment of human extinction as depicted through a Pop star Demonology. The first song ‘we appreciate power’, introduced the pro-AI-propaganda girl group who embody our potential enslavement/destruction at the hands of Artificial General intelligence.”

Grimes’ last record ‘Art Angels’  was named NME‘s Album Of The Year for 2015, beating the likes of Kendrick LamarLana Del ReyBlur, and A$AP Rocky to the accolade.

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