Grimes Is Going by a New Name That References the Speed of Light

Musician Grimes, the mother of Elon Musk's son, is now going by a new name. The performer, whose real name is Claire Elise Boucher, told The New York Times she now goes by "c," a reference to the speed of light. Grimes also revealed that their 5-month-old son X Æ A-XII Musk loves art and has even seen the Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now.

"I've watched Apocalypse Now and stuff with my baby," Grimes told the Times in a new interview about her partnership with the app Endel. "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 also sought X's advice for the music she created for Endel. "The first version, there was too many sort of sharp bells, and it caused tears and just general chaos," she said, adding that as she changed the mix, "X would smile more and stuff."

Endel is an app that gives paid subscribers access to soundscapes. According to their website, the app provides a "tech-aided bodily function" to help people cope in an environment where people face an information overload that is "destroying our psyche." Grimes was inspired to join the Endel team because she and Musk were searching for a "better baby sleeping situation."

The singer said she no longer wanted to use the white noise machines to help X sleep. "It's much easier to get them to sleep if you train them on some kind of audio situation. And so I was just like, could this be more artistic?" she told the Times. "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." Grimes believes babies "do have taste" and "fully have opinions."
Grimes' contribution to Endel was a soothing soundscape with auto-tuned vocals coming in occasionally. The final work references the ambient music Grimes heard in the past, which she tried to make "cuter." "It's a big sparklier, a bit nicer," she added.

Elsewhere in her Times interview, Grimes said she believed artificial intelligence might one day be able to create great art if you "feed" it examples from the best artists ever. "An artist who's just super charismatic and amazing and fun, and just makes the best music, and can make 1,000 songs a day, and just do 1,000 interviews a day, simultaneously," she said. "There's no reason that can't exist."

Back in May, Musk and Grimes confirmed their son's name is legally X Æ A-XII. They explained each part of the name, noting that "X" stands for an unknowable vowel, "Æ" represents Grimes' elven spelling for A.I., and A-XII is a reference to the Lockheed A-12 aircraft. As for "c," it is used to represent the speed of light, defined as 299,792,458 meters per second.