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About

Genius Annotation

The third track off Grimes' third studio album, Visions. It was named by Pitchfork as the best track of the decade so far.

In an April interview, Boucher explained the song’s true meaning:

The song is about being violently assaulted and it made me crazy for a few years. I got really paranoid walking around at night and started feeling really unsafe. The song is more about empowering myself physically amongst a masculine power, and the hate of feeling powerless, making light of masculine physical power, making it jovial and non-threatening. I took a typically violent cultural situation and made it pop and happy.

Throughout, imagery depicting a ‘dark night’ evokes both the actual event of the assault and her process of coping with the trauma.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

Song Translations:
Genius Answer
What did Grimes say about "Oblivion"?
Genius Answer

According to GrimesFandom, Grimes herself explained the behind of the song on an interview:

The song is about being violently assaulted and it made me crazy for a few years. I got really paranoid walking around at night and started feeling really unsafe. The song is more about empowering myself physically amongst a masculine power, and the hate of feeling powerless, making light of masculine physical power, making it jovial and non-threatening. I took a typically violent cultural situation and made it pop and happy"

What has the media said about the song?
Genius Answer

In 2018, NPR ranked this as the #18 greatest song by a female or nonbinary artist in the 21st century, saying:

Claire Boucher’s third album as Grimes was like a Big Bang at the foundations of pop — fuel for the fire that has continued burning down the borders between the mainstream and underground, between genres in general. Visions fused traditional pop and new jack swing structures with the pointedly nontraditional forms of IDM, noise and punk. The voraciously curious spirit of post-punk was alive in Grimes as a pop language. She took the independence and oddity of bedroom pop and rendered it big screen.

That ‘Oblivion,’ her signature song, was about street harassment only foreshadowed a new era in which conversations about such topics are normalized. Grimes wrote it about being assaulted: ‘I took one of the most shattering experiences of my life,’ she said, ‘and turned it into something I can build a career on and that allows me to travel the world.’ With the resilient ambience of this powerful pop song, Grimes exploded possibilities for herself, and us.

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