Let’s talk about Grimes for a minute. Grimes, if you don’t know, is a 31-year-old pop star who is actually around the video game space quite frequently. She performed at the Game Awards last year, where she was also revealed to be part of the soundtrack and cast of Cyberpunk 2077 (although her character is already raising eyebrows due to how suicidal themes play into her backstory). And recently she posted some photos of her with Blizzard’s Jeff Kaplan. The two were hanging out next to a huge statue of Tracer and holding an Overwatch League flag.
Grimes Tracer and Jeff pic.twitter.com/nUC1ifNrVh
— ???????????????????????? (@Grimezsz) March 3, 2020
Friends, I know very little about Grimes other than her performance at the Game Awards and that she’s apparently dating Elon Musk. But you know what I do know? Overwatch. I’ve played hundreds of hours of that game and have fairly intimate knowledge of it at this point. So I figured I would use my knowledge of Overwatch’s 31 heroes to determine, based on Grimes’ top five songs on Spotify, who her main probably is.
“You’ll Miss Me When I’m Not Around”
Leading with a reference to suicide seems about right given what very little I know about Grimes from her Cyberpunk character. Admittedly, her vocal delivery is lighter than I expected it to be, and I kind of dig how it’s juxtaposed against some of the heavier bass and instrumentation.
Right now I’m feeling like Grimes probably gravitates toward characters who are on the edgier side, so I think we’re sitting firmly with characters from Talon, the antagonistic faction in Overwatch lore. Based on this song alone, I’m feeling like Sombra, Sigma, and Moira are strong contenders. They all lean into that cyberpunk aesthetic, and are just cool enough. But we’ll see if how we feel after the next song.
“Oblivion”
Hm. Okay. With this I’m really starting to get a sense of Grimes’ style. Some dark electronic music set to more light and in some cases child-like vocals. It’s an unsettling vibe, but I get what she’s going for. The dreamy state of this one in particular made me lean more toward Sigma, just because the sort of headspace that guy seems to be in jives with this song. “What is that melody?!” It’s Grimes, Sigma. Just Grimes.
Moving on.
“Delete Forever”
Oh dang. We got an acoustic song now. This is speaking to my inner sad bitch. It’s got a sort of “hard-traveling hero” vibe that immediately brings images of McCree on his bike driving through Route 66. In comes some of the vocal effects and a beat that give it that more (apparently) traditional, poppy Grimes sound, but I get major McCree vibes from this one. But as it appears to be an abnormality in Grimes’ music, I’m not ready to commit to adding McCree to our list of possible mains.
“Violence”
I think I know this one somewhere, but I’m not sure why or how. But with it, we’re officially back into the Talon side of things, and this one really, really makes me think of Sombra. It’s leaning in hard to darker side of Grimes’ tone, and the playfully dark lyrics feels very characteristic of Sombra, who is an augmented hacker in the Overwatch universe, and is known to get under her teammates’ skin. She’s got her own agenda, so she’s pretty much using Talon’s connections to get ahead, and is always messing with the rest of them, even on high-stakes missions.
“4ÆM”
Gotta admit, this is the first song on this list that just isn’t doing it for me musically. I’m a fan of her vocal delivery in a lot of these songs, but at this point it’s so high and tinny that it’s grating. But we’re not here to critique Grimes’ music, we’re here to assess who she probably plays as when she plays Overwatch.
Despite not being a big fan of this song, its style is pretty consistent with the others we’ve gone through, being a dark, electronic, heavy instrumentation, this time punctuated with some chanting and some Indian style melodies.
But alas, I think I’ve decided on who I think Grimes’ Overwatch main is. Grimes clearly likes cyberpunk, edginess, and playfulness.
It can only be…
Sombra, the hacking, teleporting, SMG-wielding, damage hero from Talon. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to listen to more of Grimes music because at least four of these five songs were pretty rad.
