At this point pulling a Charli XCX maneuver and releasing most of her songs before the album is even out (that album being Miss_Anthropocene, available Feb. 21, 2020), Grimes has seen fit to give us yet another sampling of her avatar with “4ÆM.” Following “We Appreciate Power” (expressly stated not to be on the new record) “Violence,” “So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth” and “My Name Is Dark,” the sound of “4ÆM” has a decidedly different feel thanks to its Bollywood tinge. Grimes, in fact, stated that the song was an homage to Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s epic 2015 film, Bajirao Mastani. Bajirao was the general of the Maratha Empire in eighteenth century India, at a time when constant battle was the norm. Explaining that she wanted to write a track from the perspective of Mastani, Bajirao’s illicit mistress and then second wife (while still married to his first jilted one, Kashibai), the narrative seems to derive from the point in the film when Mastani and Bajirao first meet. Which is around the time of the celebratory and highly rave-esque Holi.
Evidently finding the song to be one of the more performance-worthy cuts from Miss_Anthropocene, Grimes delivered a tech-heavy (in terms of backdrops and stage design) rendition of it at December 12th’s The Game Awards in honor of providing the song as part of the soundtrack to Cyberpunk 2077, in which she will voice a character named Lizzy Wizzy, “a hugely popular pop star in the Cyberpunk universe.” Which Grimes already is in her own right, it would appear. Opening with Madonna in the “Frozen” video-like gesticulations, Grimes does her best version of a damned to suffering Indian woman (for she can’t resist subtle appropriation in her role as a cute wispy white girl). This soon segues into promoting the game with visuals of scenes and characters from it as Grimes steps into a radioactive-looking box and slumps over.
Back to the Mastani angle, however, even if Grimes is being more than a little reductive about it, she does seem to be playing into the character’s emotions with the repetition of the lines, “We’re out late at 4AM/He says, ‘How’s the weather, baby?/How’ve you been?’/You’re gonna get sick, you don’t know when.” For those unfamiliar with the story, Bajirao does, indeed, fall ill after being mortally wounded in battle. The only thing that might actually save him is the knowledge of Mastani’s release from imprisonment (for his family members and royal subjects don’t take too kindly to what they deem to be her whore ways). Of course, Bajirao’s first son with Kashibai, known as Nana Saheb, burns the letter from his mother pleading for the release of her own enemy so that it might spare her husband’s life. The tragedian and fatalist nature of the story is manifest in Grimes’ simple lines, “I wrote your constellation into the sky.” Now if only someone would do the same for her and Elon Musk’s eventual doomed fate.
