Here’s everything we learned from that St. Vincent Interview…

Who doesn’t love St. Vincent? She’s queer, but she doesn’t like labels. She’s a cross-genre musical powerhouse who even David Byrne finds mysterious. Most importantly, St. Vincent is a dedicated lover of wigs. And Candy Darling.  

Today on Twitter, journalist Emma Madden posted a sad, all-too-familiar freelance story: 

Around a fortnight ago I interviewed St Vincent. The next morning, her and her team demanded that the piece be killed. It was. I didn’t like how easy that was, so I’ve decided to publish it myself:https://t.co/A83nBktUAZ

— Emma Madden (@emmamaddenUK) April 26, 2021

Publish it they did, and we could not be happier about it. In a (since-deleted) post titled: “St. Vincent Told Me to Kill This Interview,” Madden grilled the singer/songwriter on her father’s recent release from prison and its impact on her new album, “Daddy’s Home.” 

It also got fairly gay, which isn’t surprising since St. Vincent is queer and, lest we forget, dated Cara Delevigne for a hot minute there. 

Here’s everything we learned about the “Daddy’s Home” musician

1. She continues to be inspired by Candy Darling. 

St. Vincent, aka Annie Clark, has made her love for trans Warhol actress Candy Darling known in the past. Here, Clark tells Madden:

“Candy Darling to me is such a beautiful heroine in that she came from Queens, and went not geographically far but worlds away to Manhattan and became her true self. [There’s] that particular kind of combination of glamour and toughness, where you feel like her name should be on the marquee and yet she could stick you with a shiv if you said the wrong thing…

I just find her inspiring and really beautiful, and I didn’t know but I found out a friend of mine was close with her and was at her bedside when she died, so I was just picturing Candy Darling’s ascent to heaven as taking the final uptown train.”

2. She loves gay disco. 

We all remember when St. Vincent absolutely went in on Masseduction’s “Slow Disco” in 2018. The artist makes no secret of her love for the gay art of disco here, stating that the story of the album takes place:

“between ‘71 and ‘76, so post flower children idealism, post the Summer of Love hangover, but pre [the] escapism of gay disco and pre nihilism of punk. Life was bad but music was good, [that] kind of vibe.

3. The album marks her “transition into Daddy”

The title “Daddy’s Home” came to Clark in part because it’s hilarious and “pervy,” but it also has a literal meaning. Two, in fact: the album is about Clark’s father’s release from prison in 2019. It also marks, according to Clark, her own “transition into Daddy.” 

“Over the past few years, I’ve just been quite a bit more leaned back and shoulder shrug and say let’s just sit down in the old beat up leather armchair and have a tequila and chat it out you know. Life is complicated, human beings are complicated and I wanted to just write stories about flawed people.”

4. Her Dad loves the album.

Speaking of fathers, Clark’s actual dad loves the album. In part, she says, “Daddy’s Home” is a way of parsing her father from herself. 

“I think on some level everyone who’s ever had a parent can understand in the sense of you’re often going “How much of you am I?” and we kind of do identity projection through all these things so no, it’s again, it’s not really there for anything other than my own anecdotal story.”

She also describes her father as “a complicated, charismatic person who’s also very intelligent, and who went down a path that was full of consequence.”

5. She Loves Tool

Madden rounds out her interview by asking St. Vincent about her love for the 90s rock band Tool:

So Tool cover album next?

No, I wish.

Someday I’m hoping.

I love Tool.

And we love you, Annie. We love you.