The most emotional concert St Vincent ever attended
Do you ever wonder what aliens would think of us if they were to visit Earth? It’s fun to ponder over a complete outsider observing the fundamentals of human existence and questioning absolutely everything. Without a doubt, one of the significant aspects of our lives that would perplex them to no end is our unrelenting reliance on music. Why do we put so much time, effort and money into the widespread production of sound? It’s tough to say, but St Vincent might have the answer.
At the end of the day, it’s just vibrations. Your favourite song, the song that gets you out of bed in the morning, the song that you detest, the one that brings a tear to your eye and the one that makes you want to dance, is a different version of the same energy. Vibrations and nothing more. Yet it is our entire lives.
Moments of happiness need to be documented with song, sad times are laced with the music playing during that period, earworms live in our heads for our entire lives, and yet we make no effort to change anything about how music impacts us, either. It is a fundamental part of everything we hold dear, but when you break it down to what is actually happening, that reliance seems silly. Doesn’t it?
St Vincent is one of the most talked about musicians today, with a stellar discography and live show that makes jaws drop worldwide. Our persistent commitment to music is embodied by people’s attitudes to her. With a guitar ability credited for its melodic style and a knowledge of sound that is entirely unique in its execution, she represents one of the artists to whom people spend so much time listening and devoting themselves.
Why is this? It could be argued that she commits to her craft because she, too, has been massively affected by music and knows how important it is. When you have had a moment at a concert which borders on epiphany, and you also make music, you are hardly going to settle on putting anything less than 100% commitment into the craft. For St Vincent, the concert that left that lasting impression on her was in 2015 in Brooklyn.
“Sufjan Stevens playing his beautiful, heartbreaking record Carrie & Lowell at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre,” she said when asked what concert changed her life the most. “I’ve cried many times at concerts – you know, you get emotional – but I started crying and then it passed the point of being able to control the crying. It’s one thing to stoically shed a single tear. It’s another thing to reach a place that’s so deep and fundamental that you feel like you could cry forever.”
If aliens were ever to question our devotion to music, that quote from St Vincent might just explain it. It is more than sound; but something that can reach deep inside us, access places we aren’t even sure exist, and bring out emotion in a way unparalleled to anything else we could ever experience. Aliens or not, that’s pretty out of this world.
