Grimes Takes Time To Talk About A Serious Problem On ‘Delete Forever’

The opioid crisis in the United States takes an average of 130 lives a day, and it costs the country an estimated $78 million a year. It’s an epidemic, and Grimes has released an emotional new song called “Delete Forever” that draws attention to the dire situation, set to appear on her forthcoming studio album Miss Anthropocene.

Grimes opened up about the song to Zane Lowe of Apple Music’s Beats 1. “It’s a pretty bummer song,” she said, adding that she’s had “quite a few friends pass away” in relation to the opioid epidemic. Grimes actually wrote “Delete Forever,” she noted, on the night that Lil Peep died in 2017. (The rapper’s official cause of death was later ruled to be an accidental overdose of fentanyl, which is a synthetic opioid, and Xanax.) “Artists keep dying and stuff, so I wrote this song on the night Lil Peep died, or whatever, because I just got super triggered,” she said.

On the song, Grimes explores the dark feelings that might surround a person struggling with the substances. “Always down, I’m not up / Guess it’s just my rotten luck / To fill my time with permanent gloom,” she sings, coasting into the chorus: “I see everything, I see everything / Don’t you tell me now that I don’t want it.” It’s heavy, yet delicate, listen, characterized by a warm, blurry instrumental. Take a listen up above.

Miss Anthropocene is set to arrive on February 21. The LP, which is about a space-dwelling demon that loves the apocalypse, will feature the previously released tunes, “Violence,” “So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth,” and “My Name Is Dark.”