Annie Clark 

Flipping through the Aug. 28 edition of The New Yorker, a glowing photo of 2001 Lake Highlands High grad Annie Clark jumps off the page. Better known by her stage name St. Vincent, she is radiant both in the image and in the story. Author Nick Paumgarten exquisitely captures Clark’s artistry, as a musician and as a human being.

Sign up for our newsletter!

* indicates required

He brings her to life in an intimate yet real way, from the description of her outfit (“studded leather loafers, a suit jacket, and black leggings with bones printed on them, in the manner of a Halloween skeleton costume”), to the origin of her unusual and heartbreaking song names:

“There’s a song on the new album called ‘Pills.’ ‘Pills to grow, pills to shrink, pills, pills, pills and a good stiff drink / pills to fuck, pills to eat, pills, pills, pills down the kitchen sink.’ (As it happens, those lines are sung by Delevingne, who will be credited, for the benefit of the British gossip press, as an underground sensation named Kid Monkey.) ‘I was trying to hold on,’ Clark recalled. ‘I didn’t have coping mechanisms for tremendous anxiety and depression. I was trying to get through pharmaceutically.'”

The venerable magazine dedicated eight pages to the homegrown rockstar, exploring her perspective as an artist, the high-profile names she works with and the things she hates about the industry (don’t ask her about being a woman in the music business). She hints at her new album, dropping this fall with a name she has not yet released. It’s definitely worth a read, find an online version here.