Artist also gives a surprising and perfect answer to whom she’d like to hear cover one of her songs
There’s only one damn song that makes St. Vincent break down and cry, and she covered it Wednesday night on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. The artist, a.k.a. Annie Clark, explained that she chose David Bowie’s 1975 hit “Young Americans” because she’d previously covered it at a Love Rocks event where she’d met up with Colbert.
St. Vincent’s rendition of the song was a little more guitar- and rock-forward than Bowie’s proto-disco funk number, and she made it her own with intense vocal stylings and some lyric changes. Where Bowie commented on the disappointment of American politics with the lyric, “Do you remember President Nixon?” (a year after Tricky Dick resigned), she invoked President Biden.
Throughout, Clark leaned into the mic, pantomiming the lyrics in her arm-length black gloves and cadet cap. Her a cappella “break down and cry” sounded operatic, and she even squeezed in another nod to Bowie (and by proxy another one of her favorite artists, Trent Reznor) by proclaiming, “I’m afraid of Americans” at the end of the song.
In a pre-performance interview, Clark said she wished Erykah Badu would cover one of her songs. “Because we’re both from Dallas, I have on many occasions tried to befriend Erykah Badu, and it has not gone well,” Clark said. “She has not been unkind; I just don’t get a response.” The others are Doechii (“I’m very into Doechii,” Clark said) and the Slits.
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Clark said the Slits, a pioneering post-punk trio’s avant-garde interpretation of Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” is her all-time favorite cover recording. Unfortunately for Clark, a Slits cover of one of her songs is unlikely, since the post-punk trio broke up after the 2010 death of frontwoman Ari Up. But just like how Colbert called out Badu in the Late Show clip, Rolling Stone would formally like to ask former Slits member (and one of our guitar heroes) Viv Albertine to consider a rendition of “Broken Man.”
Earlier this week, Clark performed a thrilling six-song set at Rolling Stone’s holiday party. She performed only her own songs at the gig, including a rousing rendition of “… At the Holiday Party.”
