“My happiest place”: St Vincent on how David Byrne shaped her career
For an artist so unabashedly progressive and forward-thinking, Annie Clark AKA St Vincent has never shied away from showing her influences off.
For one, her stage name of St Vincent comes from a song by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. The futuristic glam stylings of her image is an extended tribute to David Bowie. Several of her guitar shredding techniques were first put to record by Jimi Hendrix. Names that pretty much every major rock star of the past 40 years has been influenced by, sure, but St Vincent wears it a little differently.
You see, the very last thing that she seeks to do with all those influences is look back. All those tips of the hat to the greats of the past are nothing more than that. It seems that the artist just doesn’t have it in her to indulge in any slavish devotion to anyone who came before. For her, an influence is a starting point that she then takes and moves into the 21st century. She has a deep understanding that all those artists wouldn’t have sounded as familiar and comforting when they came through as they do today.
Put simply, they would have sound have sounded weird. I mean, can you imagine listening to the second half of “Heroes” upon release in September 1977? When the top ten of the UK albums charts contained no less than two Elvis Presley compilations and the soundtrack to A Star Is Born? Unlike many artists content to remain a tribute act to their heroes, Annie Clark only wants to replicate their effect on pop culture, rather than the music itself.
One can see this in the daring, utterly unique music she’s made ever since she debuted with 2007’s Marry Me. Even on records knowingly playing with throwback imagery and instrumentation, like 2021’s Daddy’s Home, she still finds ways to be daring and outright strange at points. However, all this does come from the artist with arguably the most direct level of influence on St Vincent. Not only as a musician but also as a collaborator and, it seems, a friend.
How did David Byrne and St Vincent get together?
David Byrne and St Vincent are a match made in heaven, and no one understands this quite like the two alt-pop singer-songwriters. Few people can make a delicious pop song sound thrillingly weird the way they can. So, when they were partnered up for a one-off live performance in 2009, it soon became clear that their collaboration could grow beyond just that. After guesting on a few of each other’s records, they realised that they could go even further than they had thought.
Their collaboration extended to a full-on collaborative studio album in 2012 with Love This Giant, which set St Vincent up perfectly for her self-titled breakout album in 2014. In fact, her work seemed to transform after working with Byrne, becoming bigger and bolder than ever before. Simultaneously becoming a full-on pop star while also being more thrilling and esoteric than any other pop star around. Perhaps this evolution came from some advice she got from Byrne when they worked together.
In an interview with The Guardian, Clark was asked how she was going to follow up her then-recent album, 2017’s Masseduction. She responded by saying, “I’m always thinking of the next thing. That’s something I learned from David Byrne: never ever look back. It’s always about the future. The joy for me comes when I’m making the thing or thinking of new things to create. That’s what I like doing best. That’s my happiest place.”
Considering that she’s become one of our most beloved pop institutions ever since, it sounds like it’s our happy place too!
