The press campaign around Grimes’ excellent fifth album Miss Anthropocene has not been without its controversy: the Canadian-born DIY musician-turned-pop star has promoted the record with billboards bearing the phrase ‘GLOBAL WARMING IS GOOD’, a decision which, naturally, drew ire. Now, in a new interview with Pitchfork around the visual language of Miss Anthropocene, Grimes has explained some of the reasons behind those vaguely shocking billboards.

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“I was like, ‘Well, we could just throw my picture up and be like ‘buy the album,’ and no one’s gonna give a fuck—or we could treat the city like an art gallery and put up an actual piece of art,’” Grimes told Pitchfork, explaining that Miss Anthropocene’s cover designer Ryder Ripps then, with that in mind, came to her with the idea for the ‘GLOBAL WARMING IS GOOD’ billboard. “When I saw it, I was like, ‘Oh, fuck no, this is a huge mistake,’” she recalls, “Then I was like, ‘Wow, this is so scary that I think we should probably put it up.’ The goal was to have less advertising and more public art.” View photos of the ‘GLOBAL WARMING IS GOOD’ billboard below, and read our review of Miss Anthropocene here.

Not grimes putting up street art on my corner that says Global Warming Is Good pic.twitter.com/5KJuvQdBNh — shqueen (@shqne) February 15, 2020

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