The Journey To ‘Pay Your Way In Pain’ — St Vincent
Only Annie Clark would drop a brand new music video and lead single a whole fifteen minutes before my final college lesson of the week, causing me to grow ever distracted by all the prospects of the near future and increasingly dying to vomit my thoughts onto a digital page. While my wait has been excruciating, there have been some advantages: several retail outlets have announced exclusive vinyl pressings, the picture disc pressing had already sold out before dinner time here in the UK, and a few news sites posted interviews. But before we get to the meat of my rambling, I want to backtrack to when news broke — or should I say when rumours began to circulate?
While most of the world probably caught wind of the news that another St Vincent album was announced today (March 4th), I caught wind of it thanks to a tweet shared to the Annie Clark subreddit on 17th February. It enlightened us to a rumour saying March 5th would see a brand new St Vincent single called ‘Pay Your Way In Pain’, coming from an upcoming album entitled ‘Daddy’s Home’ which has been produced by Jack Antonoff. The tweet even shared some lyrics from the song too, which was closely followed by a low quality leak of 30 seconds from the track shared a few hours later, and a rumoured album cover. Immediately people were making comparisons between the song to Bowie and Prince, in addition to realising the song ‘Pills’ from the previous STV record ‘Masseduction’ has a line that says “I’ll pay it in pain”. An official billboard ad was then spotted on February 25th, which confirmed everything. The new era and album cycle had begun, and it even included the release date and cover of the album, confirming the rumoured cover that began to circulate was in fact the real cover. On March 2nd a minute long teaser was posted to her social media accounts, showing an exhausted Annie Clark running barefoot around an empty hotel to pick up a ringing phone.
This new cover is a stark contrast to her previous effort ‘Masseduction’, which has bright colours and a leopard print ass bent over through the wall. ‘Daddy’s Home’ however, has sepia tones and a more grimy, messy feel about it. I dropped a comment on the AC subreddit saying my opinion: “it feels so gritty, messy and disjointed, but the font choice is a great potential reference to the speculated 70’s influence. super excited for the album and single!!”. We see St Vincent in, what I’ve started to call, her midlife crisis phase. She looks like somebody who’s just lost a fight or almost like a hooker (in the nicest way possible), doing anything she can to survive financially and get through day to day. She’s sat ruffled up in the corner of a room, putting on some kind of smile and wearing a blonde wig. The only real colours on the cover are a golden yellow album title with a green background — the cover doesn’t even say her name, but any fan knows that beneath those stockings and that smile is a yet again reborn and reinvented Annie Clark.
Since her fifth self titled studio album in 2014 to today’s announced album, we’ve seen a more sexual side to St Vincent. In 2014 she was a cult leader, in 2017 she rebirthed herself as a dominatrix of a mental institution, and now she’s “down and out” in 70’s New York. These sexual overtones carried on to this new album immediately, until I discovered that there was absolutely no sexual meaning behind it at all. Gen Z is so entrenched with kink culture, spreading theirs shamefully over TikTok, and fearlessly calling their dom “daddy”. This is what I immediately thought of when I saw the album title, and thought the new album would be a funkier and more vintage take on the ‘Masseduction’ persona that Clark birthed four years ago. Instead, the album is named Literally. Daddy is home. I didn’t know it, probably because she kept it hidden so well, but Clarks father was imprisoned eleven years ago and was finally released in 2019. That’s what inspired the name of and some material on the album, while the rest pulls visually and sonically on “grimy early 70s New York, between post-flower-child idealism and pre-disco”.
As for the single and video itself, it perfectly captures this 70’s aesthetic in the video quality, clothing and setting. The beginning of the song sees St Vincent hunched over a classic saloon style piano, playing manically and reaching for a decanter before launching into the song. We see her in a blonde wig and green suit, dancing on an empty stage and playing her signature Ernie Ball guitar. As soon as the video started I thought that she looked a little like Joanna Lumley (a national treasure here in Britain), and both the start and end of the song sounded a little like ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)’ by Eurythmics — a remark that even my mother can agree on. The thing that stood out to me most on my first listen/watch of the song was these vocal moments, where there’s absolutely no music backing her, and she screams out in anguish and desperation. Sonically there’s a massive disco and electro influence that can be heard, but lyrically St Vincent herself describes the song as being about “not letting the man get you down”.
‘Pay Your Way In Pain’ is not only the lead single, but the opening track on the album, opening us up perfectly into this brand new world and era of St Vincent music. There may be another single or two dropped between now and the albums release date on May 14th, but even if there isn’t, all I want is for the day to come so we can finally hear some new music from her. It feels like it’s going to be an intense, personal and emotive record, while also drawing on more upbeat and empowering themes and sounds too. Album track ‘Melting Of The Sun’ is described by The Guardian as “celebrating women whose particular genius was not recognised at the time” while ‘My Baby Wants A Baby’ is described in the same article as an exaggerated yet comedic take on “the commitment to her cause”. There’s plenty of lyrics that I’ve seen floating around these interviews that I already love, but I’m going to save them for you to discover yourself, and for me to discuss when I get around to hearing the album in two months. It’s going to be an impatient wait.