Before the Fever

Before the Fever
Song artwork
General Information
Title	Before the Fever
Recorded	22 Dec 2017 (demo)
Released	21 Feb 2020
Album	Miss Anthropocene
Type	Album only
Length	3:37
Key + BPM	D Minor • 129
Format	CD • Vinyl • Digital Download • Streaming
Credits
Artist	Grimes
Writer(s)	Grimes
Producer(s)	Grimes
Label	4AD
Miss Anthropocene Tracklist
You'll miss me when I'm not around
Before the Fever
IDORU

Before the Fever is a song by Grimes. It is the ninth track on her fifth album, Miss Anthropocene.

Before the Fever is the Demon of Ego Death.

Background

An early version of the song leaked along with other unfinished tracks of the album on October 25, 2019. On November 24, 2019 the final version leaked as part of the full album leak.

The track got a remix made by aacht, and it was released on February 28, 2021. It was only released via YouTube Music and SoundCloud, but it didn't get released on Spotify, Apple Music or other streaming platforms.

Composition

Meaning

Grimes told Apple Music:

❝ I wanted this song to represent literal death. Fevers are just kind of scary, but a fever is also sort of poetically imbued with the idea of passion and stuff too. It’s like it’s a weirdly loaded word—scary but compelling and beautiful. I wanted this song to represent this trajectory where like it starts sort of threatening but calm, and then it slowly gets sort of more pleading and like emotional and desperate as it goes along. The actual experience of death is so scary that it’s kind of hard to keep that aloofness or whatever. I wanted it to sort of be like following someone’s psychological trajectory if they die. Specifically a kind of villain. I was just thinking of the Joffrey death scene in Game of Thrones. And it’s like, he’s so shitty and such a prick, but then, when he dies, like, you feel bad for him. I kind of just wanted to express that feeling in the song. ❞

Lyrics

[Intro]
(Oh-oh, oh-oh)
(Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh)

[Verse]
I tease my little ashtray
With a burning cigarette
I don't want to run away
I don't even know you yet
I got everything you want
I can make it feel so wet
I'm a little bit in love with you
I can take your picture, baby

This is the sound of the end of the world
Dance me to the end of the night, be my girl
Madness, intellect, audacity
Truth and the lack thereof
They will kill us, oh, have no doubt
There are many ways in
But there's only one way out
There's only one way out
There's so many ways in
But there's only one way out

[Pre-Chorus]
This is the sound of the end of the world

[Chorus]
I - get - lost
Can you get lost with me, baby?
I - get - lost
Can you get lost with me, baby?
I - get - lost (I get lost, I get lost)
I - get - lost (Can you get lost with me, baby?)

[Outro]
(Lost)
(I get lost) (Lost with me, baby?)
(I get lost)
(There's a way through, ooh)
(There's always a way through)
(Ooh-ooh)
(Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh)

Trivia

• The song was originally titled "B4 the fever".