DIARY OF A SONG: How Grimes, the Ultimate D.I.Y. Pop Star, Made ‘Delete Forever’

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Renaissance Women –

MARCH 20, 2020 – “Delete Forever,” a standout track from the album, sounds simple at first. But, as Grimes describes in the latest episode of Diary of a Song, the track is one of the most vulnerable in her catalog. She started writing it in the fall of 2017, following the death of the emo rapper Lil Peep from an opioid overdose; when Boucher was a teenager, her close friend died in similar circumstances.

“How do we emotionally deal with this stuff?” the singer asked, describing the inspiration she took from Jack Kirby’s New Gods comics, an extensive mythology of superhumans beyond the Greek or Roman traditions. “It seems easier to digest certain things when they’re fictionalized.”

The ancient process of personifying “painful, beautiful, abstract concepts as gods,” she continued, led her to write “Delete Forever” about the goddess, or demon, of addiction. “Maybe that helps people cope better; maybe that helps society come together better.”