St. Vincent and the Limits of Rock-and-Roll Mystique
If you’ve searched St. Vincent on Twitter in the past few weeks, you haven’t seen chatter about the goofy soul sound of the 38-year-old rock star’s latest singles. You’ve seen snarky tweets about an interview that is mainly of interest to die-hard fans and people addicted to Twitter drama.
In late April, the journalist Emma Madden posted—and then deleted—a Q&A with St. Vincent that the artist’s press team had allegedly tried to stop from being published. A publicist said the singer thought that the questions had been too “aggressive.” In reality, Madden had gently asked about St. Vincent’s forthcoming sixth album, Daddy’s Home, and the situation that had loosely inspired it: St. Vincent’s father getting out of prison in 2019 after committing stock fraud. The artist’s unremarkable—though sometimes terse—answers normally would have gotten little notice. Instead, reports that she had tried to kill the piece ignited a few days of online blood sport. Commentators puzzled over her conduct, dissed her music, questioned her politics, and mocked the concept behind Daddy’s Home.
It’s unclear why St. Vincent objected to the interview, and it’s ridiculous seems painstakingly designed to avoid. Her father’s nine-year imprisonment, related to $43 million in stock fraud, is a tricky subject to discuss at a time of heightened tensions around class, race, and criminal justice in America: While protests have highlighted the over-policing of Black people in recent years, prosecutions of . But the album itself is only partly, and only abstractly, about his situation. Speaking with journalists in recent months, St. Vincent has chosen her words carefully when asked about her dad and any related social issues. She appears to want to touch on a personal story without having it become a plaything for pundits.
