Grimes and Aespa Go Deep on AI, Avatars, and the Art of the Music Video
A wildly original indie experimentalist and a group of Korean-pop superstars get together for the first time and find common ground and mutual admiration
Photographs by Kigon Kwak
G rimes is a self-taught, self-produced artist who released her first album on a small indie label more than a decade ago. Aespa is a girl group formed during the pandemic by one of K-pop’s leading labels, composed of four extremely hardworking women — Karina, Giselle, Winter, and Ningning — who sing, dance, and have shot to superstardom over the past three years.
The pairing of the two artists might seem random, but consider this: Grimes’ love of K-pop goes back more than a decade, and she’s extremely interested in new technologies — including Elf.Tech, an AI music-software program that allows anyone to replicate her voice in their own music, and an AI girl group she created called NPC. When Aespa debuted during the pandemic, they made the most of everyone remote-living by introducing four virtual counterparts for the girls. The virtual members are part of carefully crafted lore woven into the group’s videos and lyrics, and they’re called the æ members — a letter, coincidentally, that’s used in the names of two of Grimes’ children.
Aespa’s universe and Grimes’ universe clash at the perfect time, as the two artists head in opposite directions: Grimes looks further into tech and the unknowns of AI, while the girls of Aespa — whose new EP, Drama, is due out Nov. 10 — hope to now be more in the “real” world when they meet.
Grimes: You guys have some of my favorite visuals in the game. I think you’ve done some of the most innovative, awesome stuff.
Giselle: It’s like we felt this connection. You are very AI-friendly, and you have drawings and graphic design and all of that. We’re like, “Oh, someone else that does that!”
Grimes: I feel like there’s so many random things we’ve both done that no one else has done. Like the avatars. And I mean, that was one of my favorite things ever, when I saw that you guys each had sort of your digital … Are they called the AI or the æ?
Giselle: It’s called æ-Winter, æ-Ningning.
Grimes: I always appreciated that you guys had one foot in the digital realm so profoundly and one foot in the real world, I guess.
Giselle: We started with the metaverse thing because we debuted during Covid, then went on to doing more live performances. We felt very cyber, I guess. And for you, it’s like you started doing live performances then went on to doing a lot more things on the metaverse. We are doing the same thing, but kind of in opposite directions, right?
Grimes: Yes. But I think it’s kind of beautiful. I feel like limitations are really good in art, and you guys made great use of that limitation. Live music is nice, but there’s a lot of innovation that can happen in the music video. Especially because it’s so short-form in some ways, it is lower pressure and you don’t necessarily need a plot. You really can just pursue pure visual art in the cinema space. You don’t have to justify it with a narrative per se, although I know you guys have a narrative. And I think you guys … from the beginning, I was always really impressed with a lot of stuff that was happening there.
Giselle: Thank you. We actually did hear about you from Brian [Huynh, a photographer and Grimes’ co-creative director] once. When we were shooting for “Next Level,” we were talking about you, actually. [To the members in Korean] He played Grimes music on set for us, when we shot the album art for “Next Level.” And so they played your music while we were filming, and so we’re like, “Oh, my God, is this Grimes?” And he was like, “Oh, my gosh, she knows you too.” And we’re like, “really?” And then it kind of ended there, and we’re, like, we’ve always had this interest in you. And especially Ningning, like really loves your music as well. So it’s so cool that we can actually see you and talk about that here.
Winter: I’ve been curious about where you get your inspiration.
Grimes: I don’t even know. I kind of just kind of jam. Like you guys, I’m interested in the interplay between technology and music. [You’re] in this pop-idol context, but there is all this high-concept subtext. I like the euphoric gratification of pop visuals and pop music, but I also like throwing in weird things like how you guys deal with metaverse and identity.
Like in your song “Girls.” There’s some crazy lyrics there. This is going to be a bad translation, but, “Metaverse exists, now parallel world, all meanings have being part of my heart. We use sympathetic words and share body temperatures, and in the end, we only pursue the value of goodwill.” I was like, “Beautiful!”
Ningning: Wow! Giselle’s part from “Girls.”
Giselle: Wow, that’s so crazy how you translated that so well.
Grimes: Oh, I didn’t translate. I mean, the internet translated it.
Giselle: But that is so cool. I didn’t think about it in English at all, so to actually hear in English … it makes sense to me now.
Grimes: And this one I like more: “The algorithms have been distorted by bad desires. They use existence as the weapon and swallow with destruction. Evil was started at that moment.” I was just sort of reading translations of your lyrics preparing for this, and I was like, “This is not normal pop lyrics.”
Giselle: Completely not normal lyrics. Yeah.
Grimes: I actually followed you guys before you debuted because I saw Aespa with the “æ” letter, sort of like an ancient dramatic letter, or whatever, that I’m really obsessed with. It’s my son’s middle name. [In Aespa], what does the “A” stand for?
Giselle: Avatar.
Grimes: It was avatar and … exists?
Giselle: Experience.
Grimes: How much do you feel like it’s important to bring the past into the future? And do you care about language in that way? You created a visual aesthetic even just to the word itself of your band name.
Karina: The “æ” we use is primarily “avatar” and “experience,” so that’s right. Rather than looking back at the Greek roots, in our metaverse, we engage with our avatars and experiences — we are friendly with them at times, we fight with them sometimes. There are a lot of stories that are part of that. We needed a new word to define those moments. The logo came out nicely with that character, too. I have a personal question: Do you like exercise? [Laughs.]
Grimes: Do I like exercise? I kind of hate exercise.
Ningning: Me too.
Grimes: I need it to be gamified. I need to be in an obstacle course or something like that. Yeah. Do you guys like exercise?
Karina: Not really. I wanted to ask because you look so fit in your outfit.
Grimes: Oh, thank you. I don’t know if I’m the most fit, but you know what? I carry babies around a lot and I’ve been like, “Ooh, am I getting a six-pack?” I might be accidentally exercising, actually.
Giselle: Do you get inspiration from your children and from the whole experience of that?
Grimes: Definitely. It’s been totally life-changing and art-changing. A lot of the world’s greatest artists were making art for children, like Studio Ghibli, Miyazaki, and then J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings. It’s like if you look at a lot of the things that people really appreciate most, a lot of it was just them making it for their kids. And I feel sort of a moral imperative to start convincing more artists to make stuff specifically for kids. If you actually respect a child and what a child can actually understand, you don’t need to necessarily limit yourself or dumb it down. Children do really appreciate beauty. My babies love K-Pop, and they’re obsessed with dancing, coordinated dancing, where I was like, I feel like this is a universal truth, that really precise coordinated dancing. It’s a universal joy or something.
Giselle: One of your songs I really like is “Easily.”
Grimes: Oh, wow. That’s the most hated by the fans. No one’s ever said that to me before. Thank you.
Giselle: I tend to like songs like “Easily” and “California.” How did you come up with that vibe?
Grimes: “California,” I think I was just doing Taylor Swift cosplay, but it’s also vaguely about how the media is obsessed with portraying you as this troubled soul or something. I don’t know if you guys get that the same way in your media.
Giselle: Oh, we definitely get that. [To the members in Korean] Like how the media tries to portray us badly, scandals, things like that.
Grimes: I feel like some of the K-pop media is so savage sometimes. I feel like the K-pop fandom could be so amazing, but then so aggro, expecting so much.
Giselle: For sure. While K-pop fans can be so great, there are also scary people out there.
We have such different personalities, but we mesh so well together.
—Karina of Aespa
Ningning: I really love your music, but I also like your artwork, like your paintings. I saw you have a lot of tattoos. Are they designed by you?
Grimes: Actually, rarely. What I normally do is I find a tattoo artist that I really love and let them do their best work on me. Do you guys have tattoos?
Ningning: Yeah, I have three. It’s so small. My design [laughs].
Grimes: That might be the smallest tattoo I’ve ever seen.
Ningning: We can’t do the big ones. I love tattoos, but I just can have a small one.… I’m waiting for your next album. Do you have some plans?
Grimes: It got held in limbo for a while, and then I started making a new album. My management is killing me because they’re like, “We have a whole album, why won’t you release it?” I have a bunch of stuff coming up that I’m really, really excited about. I went through this process of labels, and there is always a lot of pressure to make the first single the most commercial thing, all this stuff. I’m trying to focus on the singles and the videos. I have my album and an AI album, and I’m going to make them compete.
Giselle: Oh? Really?
Grimes: Yeah, it’s sort of an experiment about AI versus humanity. I’m working with a bunch of kids using various types of AI in the Grimes style. I’m feeding them training data and various things. They’re doing the AI thing and all the art for it. And then I’m doing my thing and the art for it. I want them to compete.
Winter: I heard a little bit about Elf.Tech. It’s such an innovative idea — to have a song with your voice without you singing. How is that progressing?
Grimes: We’ve created a voice emulator that uses AI. So if you sang into it and you sang like “La, la, la,” it would be my voice. What we’re doing is we are letting kids basically make music, use my voice, open-sourcing Grimes, and not punishing them for distributing that music. And in some cases, if they do it through us, we can collect royalties for them, but they’re also allowed to do it through another label.
Giselle: Were there results you enjoyed from it?
Grimes: There were some people that did better versions of things I wanted to do than I would’ve done. And a couple of people actually got signed from the songs that they did.
Giselle: That’s so cool. You’re helping people.
Grimes. What’s it like working [together]? I feel like you guys are together so much of the time.
Karina: Even though the four of us have such different personalities, there’s something that makes us mesh so well. We get each other even without having to speak. To be honest, there are K-pop groups that fight a lot or don’t get along. We never had that.
Grimes: Very sick. Touring’s hard, huh?
Ningning: Yes [laughs].
Giselle: [Laughs.] It’s hard. Physically.
Grimes: I wanted to ask about the music-video process. I feel like it’s a medium that America is losing, but it continues to innovate in Korea.
Giselle: What we say in Korean a lot is “Music you can see.” A person is not fully getting the K-pop experience if they don’t watch the video.
I have my album and an AI album. I’m going to make them compete.
—Grimes
Grimes: What music do you guys listen to?
Ningning: I really love techno. So I really love your music. Yeah, it’s sci-fi and futuristic, so techno and R&B? Yeah, R&B.
Grimes: What’s your favorite techno right now?
Ningning: Grimes [laughs].
Winter: I listen to a variety of genres, but I listen to older Korean music, and I like band sounds.
Grimes: I’m an old-school K-pop fan.
Giselle: Oh, my God, me too.
Grimes: My allegiance to G-Dragon and TOP is very real. I actually knew CL a long time ago, for a while. One of the beginning things of Grimes is I was so obsessed with K-pop videos. That’s what got me into directing videos. I’ve also always been obsessively into finding weird parts about music. I started noticing it rising in 2010.
Giselle: 2010? Wow. That’s OG.
Grimes: Do people call that first-wave K-pop? And this is fourth-wave K-pop?
Giselle: Generation. First generation.
Ningning: I knew you because of your artwork, first. I didn’t know you did music, too.
Grimes: I was slightly worried it’s a one-sided relationship. I was like, “Do they know who I am?”
Giselle: We used to say to our management, “We want to do something with her.” We’ve always had a lot of interest in you.
Grimes: Same, same. This is an honor and very exciting.
Parts of this interview were conducted in Korean and translated by the author.
Aespa: Hair by YOON SEOHA. Makeup by CHO EUNBEE. Styling by LEE BAEKHAP. Grimes: Hair by LAUREN PALMER-SMITH for FORWARD ARTISTS. Styling by TURNER. Associate Producer: Vanessa Wilkins. Video Director of Photography: BRET HAMILTON. Camera Operators: GABRIELLA SALINARDO and CHRISTINA CROPPER. Gaffer: JUSTIN JEMERSON. Sound Mixer: TARA CATHERINE REID. Interview Editor: GAWOON CHUNG. Transcription: JULIE KIM. BTS Editor: ADEN KHAN. Styling assistance by JOEY SIGALA. Photographic assistance by ANDREW HARLESS and PETER BYUN.