Grimes Breaks Down Inspiration Behind ‘Global Warming Is Good’ Billboard Campaign

Treating the space of a metropolis like a makeshift art gallery was key in the inspiration behind Grimes‘ Miss Anthropocene–promoting billboard campaign.

As you may or may not have been made privy to, one particular billboard—the one that reads GLOBAL WARMING IS GOOD—came about after Grimes decided that the fear she first felt when conceptual artist Ryder Ripps pitched the idea was (ultimately) exactly why she should sign off on its implementation.

“I was like, ‘Well, we could just throw my picture up and be like, ‘buy the album,’ and no one’s gonna give a fuck—or we could treat the city like an art gallery and put up an actual piece of art that isn’t super promotional for the record but maybe it makes people think or makes people talk,'” Grimes told Pitchfork in an interview earlier this week.

Elaborating further, Grimes looked back on the moment Ripps first presented the idea.

“So [conceptual artist] Ryder [Ripps] put together the GLOBAL WARMING IS GOOD thing,” she said. “When I saw it, I was like, ‘Oh, fuck no, this is a huge mistake.’ Then I was like, ‘Wow, this is so scary that I think we should probably put it up.’ The goal was to have less advertising and more public art.”