Dark

Dark was intended to be an "alter ego" for Grimes to release "non-Grimes musical ventures" as she was feeling "boxed in by the Grimes branding".

Background

In a Tumblr post on March 13, 2019 Grimes first introduced Dark:

❝ New Side Project called Dark

still under Grimes umbrella but, just gna start releasing demos under other names as album is taking too long.. need a way 2 make art that isn’t so high pressure

lo fi sad elf songs for a weird AR musical im working on </3

kinda like the sub-groups of Loona X Gorillaz vibes. Character design isn’t done yet so just using pre-existing filters for now – artists tagged in the yt description ❞

On March 14, 2019, in the description under the Pretty Dark music video, Grimes explained:

❝ NOT A SINGLE lol just a demo. This is from an AR musical im working on (AKA NOT THE ALBUM/ NOT OFFICIAL GRIMES MUSIC//////)

made the song and video yesterday so obvs majorly rough,

but while im finishing my album im just gonna start casually dropping stuff as I see fit. Been doing this exercise where I try to write and produce a whole song in like ~1-2 hrs... fuck technical proficiency and whatnot.

**** Also, so gna start making AR (or illustrated?) 'sub-members' within Grimes (The art angels, as it were lol). (Kinda like the Loona sub-bands X the Gorillaz?... ..psychedelic post k pop-ish fake band for my non-Grimes musical ventures)

_They are the main characters from the book/ musical im working on.. (AKA im bored of being so precious abt music and also feeling boxed in by the Grimes branding and I have this whole other world that's rly fun to write for..

So I’ll save big singles and things for Grimes and casually release music more often as the AR band. )

PS… This is not her final look... but this character is named Dark. ❞

Grimes revealed who is Dark when asked if she would share the lore behind her project:

❝ Yeah! I’ve got some p good lore but it was too long when I wrote it out and Hana said twas too intense for YouTube. But this character is an elite battle angel who is programmed to be in love so she resents her programming but Stockholm syndrome vibes ❞

Later, in April, for Crack Magazine she said:

❝ Dark is going to be my main alter ego [...] It’s visually the best thing I’ve ever come up with. Everyone is very tired of me making metal and screamo and stuff, so that can just be Dark. ❞

Songs

• Pretty Dark
• blaze forever like a useless star, initially intended for Miss Anthropocene, in 2019 Grimes revealed she would reuse the song under an alter ego.
• My Name is Dark, eventually released on Miss Anthropocene, the song was first used in a commercial in 2018, and described the song as being "written in character".
• принцесса/Princessa, uploaded to Soundcloud in 2019 under the name Dark.