Columbia Records

Columbia Records Logo

Columbia Records is an US based record label company owned by Sony.

Background with Grimes

Grimes announced her signing to Columbia Records on March 8, 2021, soon after leaving 4AD. She signed to the label in order to "(..) get out of the gate-keeping of indie music and I need $ for music videos etc. (..)"

She released two songs with music videos - Player of Games and Shinigami Eyes - during her time with the label.

But in 2023 she left the record label and became independent, having expressed dissatisfaction with how the label managed her.^{[citation needed]} The causes of the feud between her and Columbia Records are unclear, though Grimes has mentioned several reasons:

• On November 28, 2021, in a since deleted TikTok video, Grimes explained personal problems annoying her life and subsequently her management:

❝ I know I've been a total hermit, but, frankly, I've developed, like, severe PTSD from public life which, maybe, everyone can kind of relate to, right now?

Cancellations aside, I've been, like, dragged into literal [phee], literal geopolitical scandals on CNN, depositions, had all my personal shit leaked by friends which led to more depositions, had stalkers showing up at my house trying to kill me when I'm eight months pregnant and, you know; dragged into conspiracy theories about resource extraction and somehow ended up as some kinda Marie Antoinette-esque symbol for inequality in the pop stan community, which, frankly, is fairly entertaining and I'm not mad at that.

Long story short, I've developed, like, debilitating anxiety about being online, which has been super annoying to my label, my team, and me, cuz, like, fear is the mind killer, first of all. ❞

• Another reason that Grimes became independent was for her own purposes. Shortly after she left Columbia Records, she announced elf.tech and GrimesAI as tools to enable Grimes to be "(..) open source and self replicating". She also stated on X that "(..) All Grimes ip [intellectual property] is Creative Commons - anyone can use (..)

By the turn of 2023, Grimes had left the record label.

Trivia

• Columbia Records made Grimes post a lot of entertainment content from 2021 to 2022 on TikTok in order to gain a large gathering of followers and to promote upcoming songs such as Player of Games and Shinigami Eyes, the latter of which was not allowed to be released before it "(..) gets 20m [million] plays on Tik tok (..)"