Musician Grimes said her 16-month-old son, X Æ A-Xii, can “sense” that she does not like being called “mother.” Instead, X calls her by her first name. Grimes, whose real name is Claire Elise Boucher, and her boyfriend, tech billionaire Elon Musk, welcomed X in May 2020. Last year, Grimes said X was into “radical art” and she believes babies have taste in art at an early age.
“I think having a baby was a big rebirth for me, like artistically,” Grimes told Vogue in a video about her Met Gala look, published Thursday. “Being a mother feels weird to say. For some reason, I don’t identify with that word.” Grimes believes X understands his mother does not like to be called “mother,” since he does not refer to her that way. Instead, X calls her Claire. “Which is so… I’m like, ‘How are you…?’” Grimes said, reports PEOPLE. “Like, maybe he can sense my distaste for the word ‘mother.’”
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This is not the first time Grimes, 33, has suggested X has a better understanding of his surroundings than expected. In an October 2020 interview with The New York Times, she admitted to watching Apocalypse Now and other difficult pieces of art with X already. “He’s into radical art. Like, he just actually is, and I don’t think it’s problematic to engage with them on that level,” Grimes said, before later criticizing art targeted specifically for babies. “In general, stuff for babies is really just creatively bad. I don’t want your first introduction to the world to just be all this aimless crap,” she said at the time.
X is Grimes’ first child. Musk, 50, is also dad to twins Zavier and Griffin, 17; and triplets Kai, Saxon, and Damian, 15, whom he shares with his first wife, Justine Wilson. Musk and Wilson’s first son, Nevada Musk, died from SIDS at 10 weeks old in 2002. Grimes and Musk first named their son X Æ A-12, but this was later changed to X Æ A-Xii because numbers are not allowed in legal names in California. The A-12 was a reference to the CIA’s Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance plane, the couple’s favorite aircraft.
Grimes and Musk do not often share photos of X on social media. However, their little one was seen in a TikTok video Grimes posted last month to promote her song “Shinigami Eyes.” Grimes has released five studio albums so far, including last year’s Miss Anthropocene.
