The Song Rihanna Didn’t Want

Visions is one of the most important albums of the last decade—and I mean that the way a record becomes the sound of a specific room at a specific time, not the way critics use "important" to mean difficult and correct. Tracks like Genesis, Oblivion, and Be a Body (侘寂) lived in my headphones for months. The album peaked at 67 in the UK and barely scraped the US top 100, which tells you everything about how these things get decided and nothing about the actual music.

Now Grimes is back. Go was originally written for Rihanna, who passed on it. I genuinely don’t understand that call. The song is everything—propulsive and strange, with that airlock-recorded quality that makes Grimes sound like she operates outside the normal atmosphere of pop. It should have been on a major-label album. The fact that it ended up a Grimes track instead is probably our gain.

I hope she brings this one to Berlin.