[4][5] The name of the album is a pun on the feminine title "Miss", and the words "misanthrope" and "Anthropocene",[6] a neologism popularised by Paul J. Crutzen in 2000 that was proposed to denote the current geological age the Earth is in.

Grimes elaborated in her interview with Crack Magazine that she had been made out to be a villain in the media due to large publications misrepresenting things she had said and the media's criticism of her relationship with Elon Musk, claiming that publications The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vice, and The Guardian had spread falsehoods about her, deriding that "we really do live in a post-truth society".

Grimes stated that if she was going to be "stuck being a villain" then she wanted "to pursue villainy artistically", saying that it is "a really fun idea" to her, naming characters the Joker and Thanos as inspirations.

Grimes mentioned that despite it being her favourite album, she had already "moved on" from the dark themes of Miss Anthropocene, which were caused by "a fair number of things that were going on at the time [of its creation]."

She also stated that the song "Violence" was intended for the unnamed sixth album but was included on Miss Anthropocene because the track "feels good".

[18] On October 15, 2019, Grimes revealed via a reply to a fan on Instagram that physical copies of Miss Anthropocene were in the process of being pressed.

In an Instagram post published on August 13, 2019, Grimes announced the first official single from Miss Anthropocene would be released on September 13, 2019.

[43][44] The song, originally speculated to be titled "A New Way to Die" due to the caption of her Instagram post, was clarified later to actually be called "Violence".

[53] The track's nu-metal sound was praised by many publications, with Stereogum calling it a "dark and gritty electro-rocker" with a "menacing guitar riff".

[62] It was written on the same night that emo rap artist Lil Peep accidentally died after overdosing on a fake Xanax pill that was laced with fentanyl.

The footage was originally shot so that her artistic team could create visuals for the album,[72] but she cited the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason she elected to involve her fans, in case they are "bored and wanna learn new things" while on lockdown.

[79] Reviewing Miss Anthropocene for The Independent, Adam White deemed it a "triumph" and praised the wide range of sounds explored on the album, saying that it "operates much like a greatest hits record".

[25] Anupa Mistry of Pitchfork wrote that the album successfully builds upon "Grimes' long-standing interest in rave nostalgia and alluring pop music from around the world", despite expressing reservations about its "rendering [of] climate crisis as dystopian aesthetic".

[85] NME journalist Rhian Daly described the climate change concept as "fragmented ... rather than being a unifying thing to tie every song neatly together", while praising Miss Anthropocene's mix of sounds, pointing to the "eerie" "New Gods" and "intergalactic rave-pop" of "Violence" as highlights.

[84] Alexis Petridis of The Guardian found it to be an effective commentary on the "toxicity of modern celebrity" as opposed to climate change, adding that "on those terms, Miss Anthropocene works remarkably well: for all the sci-fi theorising, the emotions at its centre feel prosaic, realistic and affecting".

[82] AllMusic critic Heather Phares concluded that despite being less "vivid" than her earlier work, the album is "often fascinating and defies expectations in ways that still fit her always thought-provoking aesthetic".

[20] Claire Shaffer of Rolling Stone commended Grimes' intentions but found that "what the album actually has to say about climate change is often lost under the admittedly beautiful, meticulously composed wreckage.

[81] Paste's Max Freedman was more critical and wrote that Miss Anthropocene "veers on incoherent" due to its lack of "subtle, effective metaphors and narratives".

"[87] Louise Bruton The Irish Times described the album as a "frightening look at the many shades of human extinction in beautiful washes of nu-metal and cold electronica.

"[83] In 2021, Pitchfork included the album in their "Rescored" list, adjusting its original score of 8.2 to a 6.9, with Madison Bloom claiming that Grimes "sounds like a carbon copy of herself" on it.