Meet Grimes, the Canadian pop star who streams video games and is dating Elon Musk

Avery HartmansMay 8, 2018, 21:14 IST

Charles Sykes/AP

At Monday's Met Gala, several freshly- minted celebrity couples made their debut. But perhaps the most surprising new pairing of the evening: billionaire tech exec Elon Musk and Canadian musician and producer Grimes.

While Musk has been known to date successful and high-profile women, the two made a seemingly unlikely pairing. Shortly before they walked the red carpet together, Page Six announced their relationship and explained the backstory of how they met. The two connected over Twitter, thanks to a shared sense of humor and fascination with artificial intelligence.

But for those who may still be wondering "Who is Grimes?" here's what you need to know about the Canadian pop superstar.

See Meet Grimes, the Canadian pop star who streams video games and is dating Elon Musk >>

Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia. She attended a school that specialized in creative arts, but didn't focus on music until she started attending McGill University in Montreal.

Source: The Guardian, The Fader

A friend coerced Boucher into singing backing vocals for his band, and she found it incredibly easy to hit all the right notes. She had a friend show her how to use Garageband and started recording music herself.

Source: The Guardian

In 2010, Boucher released her debut, a cassette-only album called "Geidi Primes." She released her second album, "Halfaxa," later that year and subsequently went on tour with Swedish singer Lykke Li. Eventually, she dropped out of McGill to focus on music.

Source: The Guardian, The Fader

In 2012, Boucher signed to British indie label 4AD and released "Visions," which would become a breakout success. The best-known song on the album, "Oblivion," was named the best song of the year by Pitchfork.

Source: Roc Nation, The Guardian

Boucher signed with Jay Z's management company, Roc Nation, in 2013.

Source: The Fader

Boucher released her fourth studio album, "Art Angels," in the fall of 2015. The single of the album, "Flesh Without Blood," features a character she created named Rococo Basilisk, who is "doomed to be eternally tortured by an artificial intelligence, but she's also kind of like Marie Antoinette."

Source: Business Insider, Fuse

Beyond singing, Boucher is a producer as well, and she's been vocal about how the music industry and media treats female artists. "The thing that I hate about the music industry is all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Grimes is a female musician’ and ‘Grimes has a girly voice,'" she told The Fader. "It’s like, yeah, but I’m a producer and I spend all day looking at f------ graphs and EQs and doing really technical work."

Source: The Fader

Boucher is also an avid gamer, and has taken to video game streaming platform Twitch to stream herself playing fantasy role-playing game "Bloodborne."

You can check out her Twitch channel here.

Source: Noisey

Boucher attended the 2018 Met Gala with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who she's said to have been "quietly dating" for the few weeks.

Source: Page Six

Boucher and Musk met on Twitter. Musk was planning to make a joke about artificial intelligence, and discovered Boucher had beaten him to the punch — Musk wanted to make the same "Rococo Basilisk" joke that she had already made in her "Flesh Without Blood" video.