Be a Body (lost unreleased Grimes music video; 2012)

This article has been tagged as NSFW due to its images containing nudity.

A still from the video.

Status: Lost

Claire Boucher, known by her stage name Grimes, is a Canadian producer, singer, director, and visual artist. On January 31st, 2012, she released the album Visions, to critical acclaim. Along with the album, she released music videos for the singles “Genesis” and “Oblivion.” A music video was produced for the song “Be a Body,” but was never released.

Background

In 2012, Grimes posted to her Tumblr blog images of the video’s star, ballerina Hannah Myrberg, with “be a body” tattooed on her knuckles.^[1] In 2013, she published a Tumblr post^[2] showing stills from the unreleased video, adding that the video “may never see the light of day” since it was made before she signed to record label 4AD in January 2012.^[3] Both posts are now deleted, and the video was shelved without explanation for many years.

2022 Explanation

In 2022, the Visions vinyl was reissued for its tenth anniversary. The vinyl package came with a booklet containing handwritten notes and commentary from Grimes.^[4] In the commentary for “Be a Body,” she wrote why the video was never released:

“We shot a video for it starring my beautiful friend Hannah Myrberg who was a ballerina, and then she passed away before we could put the video out. And so we just never put it out because it felt exploitative of her death or something. I think everyone was just really traumatized and didn’t know how to handle it. I remember she stick-and-poke tattooed “be a body” onto her knuckles while we were making this. Miss her a lot, and she’s always tied to this song for me. Dedicated to her for sure.”

Myrberg’s cause and date of death are unknown. Due to her untimely passing, it is unlikely the video will ever be officially released.