Watch Grimes’ Wild Tonight Show Performance Of “We Appreciate Power”
We’ve been waiting a long time, through several media maelstroms, for some new Grimes music. There’s finally some here now. Two weeks ago, Grimes teamed up with regular collaborator HANA for “We Appreciate Power,” a new — ironic? maybe? — song that sounds a bit like Nine Inch Nails, if Trent Reznor were a K-pop idol. And last night, Grimes and HANA brought the song to the stage at The Tonight Show, making a tripped-out visual experience of it.
You can’t accuse Grimes of underthinking this thing. She put enormous obvious effort into the song’s staging, its lighting, everything. Grimes shared the stage with three people, HANA and two dancers, and everyone wore mostly-matching white catsuits. Grimes wore a thing over her eyes that looked like a blindfold. The dancers stood on a slowly-rotating turntable and clutched things that looked like scepters. Nothing was halfassed.
Grimes herself started the song seated, crisscross-applesauce, at the center of the stage, singing while surrounded by electronic doohickeys. HANA played the distorto-guitar riff. Eventually, the various players moved around the board. And I have to say: The song does improve with this kind of bizarre arena-pop production around it. It won’t leave you any less confused, though. Check out the performance below.
“We Appreciate Power” is out now on 4AD.