St. Vincent

St. Vincent, the stage name of Annie Clark, has long distinguished herself through incisive songcraft and strikingly original guitar work that upends standard rock and pop expectations. Having attended Berklee School of Music after discovering guitar through her admiration for Nirvana and Soundgarden, she unveiled her boundary-crossing style with the 2007 release Marry Me, an intellectually rich and emotionally resonant blend of indie, rock, electronic, and jazz elements. Over time she attained an uncommon equilibrium of critical regard and mainstream appeal, entering the charts via the intricate narratives of 2009’s Actor, claiming the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album—the first solo female winner in two decades—with the coolly sardonic St. Vincent in 2014, and reaching the Billboard Top Ten through the anti-pop stance of the Grammy-winning MASSEDUCTION in 2017. Having absorbed the warmth and sleaze of the 1970s on 2021’s Daddy’s Home, she pressed further against both audience and personal expectations with the self-produced, industrial-inflected All Born Screaming of 2024 together with its Spanish-language counterpart Todos Hacen Gritando.

Born Annie Erin Clark on September 28, 1982, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she grew up primarily in Dallas, Texas. She took up the guitar at twelve and gained firsthand insight into touring life as a teenager by accompanying her uncle Tuck Andress on the road with his well-known jazz duo Tuck & Patti. After finishing high school in 2001, she enrolled at the renowned Berklee School of Music and, in 2003, recorded the self-released three-song EP Ratsliveonnoevilstar with fellow students.

Clark departed Berklee in 2004 to become a guitarist and vocalist in the expansive Baroque-pop ensemble the Polyphonic Spree, touring extensively and contributing to their 2007 album The Fragile Army. That same year she also performed with Glenn Branca’s 100 Guitar Orchestra on one of his avant-garde symphonies. Leaving the Polyphonic Spree in 2006, she joined the touring band of fellow idiosyncratic pop composer Sufjan Stevens. To sell at those concerts she issued a three-song EP under the adopted name St. Vincent, drawn from the New York hospital where poet Dylan Thomas died and from her great-grandmother’s middle name. During this period she laid down her debut album with assistance from Polyphonic Spree members Louis Schwadron and Brian Teasley plus keyboardist Mike Carson, a frequent David Bowie collaborator. Issued in July 2007 on Beggars Banquet, Marry Me earned widespread praise, and in 2008 Clark received the PLUG Independent Music Award for Female Artist of the Year.

Once the Marry Me tour concluded, Clark began shaping the follow-up St. Vincent album. Composed largely at home on computer and steeped in the lush, fantastical atmospheres of films such as Snow White and The Wizard of Oz, May 2009’s Actor was produced by John Congleton and marked her first release on 4AD.

A clear advance in both musical and lyrical ambition over her debut, the album garnered strong notices and broader commercial traction, reaching number nine on the Billboard Independent Albums chart and number 90 on the Billboard Top 200. That year Clark joined Bon Iver on “Roslyn” for the Twilight Saga: New Moon soundtrack and made guest appearances on records by the Mountain Goats and the New Pornographers amid a demanding tour schedule.

Late in 2010 she moved to Seattle to compose her third album and rejoined Congleton to record it the next year. Released in September 2011, Strange Mercy introduced a more autobiographical turn to her writing and peaked at number 19 on the Billboard 200. Also in 2011 she performed a memorable rendition of Big Black’s “Kerosene” at a concert saluting the bands chronicled in Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life, drawing approval from Steve Albini, and supplied an instrumental version of the Actor track “The Sequel” to yMusic’s album Beautiful Mechanical.

In 2012 Clark teamed with Talking Heads musician David Byrne, whom she had first met in 2009 at Radio City Music Hall during the AIDS/HIV benefit concert for Dark Was the Night. What began as a one-off performance evolved into the September 2012 album Love This Giant. Additional 2012 collaborations included work with Andrew Bird and Amanda Palmer plus the track “The Antidote” for the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 soundtrack. St. Vincent spent much of 2012 and 2013 touring behind the project, issuing the companion EP Brass Tactics in May 2013. Later that year she and Congleton started work on her fourth album; that November she was awarded the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award for Performing Arts. St. Vincent, featuring some of her most immediately engaging songwriting alongside demanding sonic textures, arrived in early 2014, reaching number 12 in the U.S. and number 21 in the U.K. That April she fronted a reunited Nirvana at the 29th Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, performing “Lithium.” In February 2015 St. Vincent claimed the Grammy for Best Alternative Album, making Clark the first solo female recipient in twenty years. Later that year she appeared on the Chemical Brothers’ album Born in the Echoes.

During 2016 Clark contributed a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Emotional Rescue” to the A Bigger Splash soundtrack, directed a segment of the all-female horror anthology film XX, and designed a signature Music Man guitar for Ernie Ball. She became the first female ambassador for Record Store Day in 2017 and released her fifth album, MASSEDUCTION, recorded with co-producer Jack Antonoff in New York and Los Angeles. The record featured contributions from Kamasi Washington, Jenny Lewis, Tuck & Patti, Doveman, and Cara Delevingne and received broad acclaim. Debuting at number ten on the Billboard 200, MASSEDUCTION also reached the top ten in the U.K. and the top twenty in Australia. In October 2018 St. Vincent issued MassEducation, a piano-and-vocal reinterpretation of the MASSEDUCTION material with Thomas Bartlett. Early in 2019 Clark won the Grammy for Best Rock Song for “Masseduction” at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards, where she performed a smoldering duet with Dua Lipa. She also produced Sleater-Kinney’s The Center Won’t Hold, and that December saw the release of Nina Kraviz Presents Masseduction Rewired, a remix collection featuring reworkings by EOD, Jlin, and Laurel Halo.

The following year Clark performed on the Chicks’ album Gaslighter, appeared on Gorillaz’s Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, and collaborated with Japanese musician Yoshiki on a classical arrangement of “New York.” For her sixth album, May 2021’s Grammy-nominated Daddy’s Home, she reunited with Antonoff and filtered character studies through the music and mood of the early 1970s along with her father’s release from prison. Reaching number 16 in the U.S., number four in the U.K., and charting across several European countries, Daddy’s Home also secured the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.

In 2023 “Cruel Summer,” a song Clark co-wrote for Taylor Swift’s 2019 album Lover, ascended to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. St. Vincent’s next record, April 2024’s All Born Screaming, adopted a markedly different direction from that track or Daddy’s Home. Taking full production control herself, she drew on 1990s grunge and industrial influences while enlisting Dave Grohl, Cate Le Bon, and Stella Mozgawa for songs that conveyed the raw force of existence. A Top Five hit in the U.K., the album reached number 13 on the U.S. Independent Albums Chart and registered in Australia and throughout Europe. While touring Mexico, Spain, and South America, Clark observed fans singing along in English, prompting her to fashion a Spanish-language edition of All Born Screaming. Working with friend and collaborator Alan Del Rio Ortiz, she recast the material as November 2024’s Todos Hacen Gritando. Around the time of that release, St. Vincent earned Grammy nominations for Best Rock Performance (“Broken Man”) and Best Rock Song (“Flea”), while All Born Screaming was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album.