Do you guys know my best friend? Her name is St. Vincent.
Well, her real name is Annie Clark, but I don’t know anything about Annie Clark. I’ve never met her.
When my friends waited for her after her set in Oxford she was happy to sign autographs and take pictures. She was hilarious and real during her quarantine Instagram live streams. She seems cool in interviews, although that could just be a facade she emits to control her image in the press.
(As you can tell my philosophy of not judging people I don’t know goes both ways.)
But I do know St. Vincent. St.Vincent exists through music, and I know her music backward and forwards. I’ve binged her albums more than any TV show. Even Parks & Recreation, which if you know me, is saying something.
When I listen to St.Vincent I feel seen and understood. It’s a natural high. When I started listening to her at 25, I felt like I could track my emotional journey through her music. She’s the first artist to whom I’ve ever related.
What’s interesting is my relation to her has little to do with her lyrics, which are, in general, the vehicle for relating through music.
It’s worth saying despite being so obvious (and I’m gonna steal a quote from V for Vendetta to make it more fun):
“Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.”
But what about the people like me (and as I recently found out from Bill Maher’s podcast, Cameron Crowe) who don’t listen to lyrics? How do we relate to music? Honestly, I never even asked myself that question until I started listening to St. Vincent.
Some of the artists I started loving back in the day like Gorillaz and Radiohead dispel any ability to relate in the first place. Gorillaz are cartoons. I’m not a cartoon. Their music isn’t about relating. It’s about traversing their cartoon narrative alongside them.
In the case of Radiohead, I still can’t understand what Thom is saying most of the time and I don’t care to look it up. The first song I cried to was “Nude.” I don’t need to alter that connection one bit.
Then there are artists where relating through lyrics is possible, but I just don’t care to do it.
When I listen to Zeppelin the sheer force hitting my ears overpowers my conscious mind to where I enter this happy trance that I still can’t accurately describe. It doesn’t matter what Robert Plant is saying.
When I listen to the Beatles I think, “How the fuck could Paul and John (and occasionally George and Ringo) come up with this?”. The emotional resonance wasn’t about relating to anything.
Besides, Zeppelin and The Beatles are one of millions of groups who wrote most of their songs about sex and relationships. A subject with which I have minimal experience.
But that’s the beauty of music, and extrapolated out, life itself. You don’t have to find the love of your life or go through heartbreak to relate to songs written about those experiences or to relate to people who have been through them.
Relation is about emotion, and St.Vincent’s musical journey aligns with my emotional journey.
She gets me. She’s my best friend.
Her shift in sound over the 14 years from Marry Me (2007) to Daddy’s Home (2021) and what’s now been teased for All Born Screaming this year, is gargantuan. There is simply no way this shift in sound isn’t attached to an internal shift as well.
(I also like the word “gargantuan,” Elle.)
“Shift” might not even be the right word. “Growth” is more accurate.
Going back to Marry Me, St.Vincent’s sound defied classification. I’m not precisely sure when the term “art pop” was paired with her music, but it applies to the first album. I’m also not sure of any artists before her who fit the term either. Bowie comes to mind, but he wasn’t pop. He was rock and fucking roll.
As diverse as Marry Me is, there is also an overbearing sense of restraint. You could even tell before there were six other reference points (six other albums) to which you could compare it.
Instead of the titanic guitar and spitfire vocal delivery that St. Vincent is capable of, she was dainty and delicate on her first couple of albums. Her songs were carefully composed like a ship in a bottle. Beautiful, but fragile. She had so many ideas, but she wasn’t yet confident enough to share all of them the way she wanted.
The artwork on Marry Me says it all. It’s just her. Pale face. Eyes front, but where is she looking? You can’t tell. It’s mysterious, but there is clearly more beneath the surface. There is a fire that has yet to burn.
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