Tag: St Vincent

New York-based singer-songwriter St. Vincent has spoken to The Guardian about Marilyn, whose writing inspired ‘Surgeon’, a track on the new album, Strange Mercy:

‘Strange Mercy, she says, is very much about anaesthetising pain, and searching for ways to transform, “to be a whole person”, a sentiment expressed in a line Clark lifted from Monroe’s diaries for the song Surgeon: “Best finest surgeon, come cut me open.” “Marilyn was this relic of the 60s, and not particularly compelling when I was younger, but when I started reading about her, I really sympathised,” she says. “For all the Hollywood glitz, it was a pretty dark life. That line was just the strangest, most poignant line. I wonder how she’d feel about it being put into a pop song.”

The Monroe story, of course, ended badly: she was found dead in her bedroom by her psychoanalyst, her blood filled with nembutal and chloral hydrate. It was ruled to be suicide, though conspiracy theories abound. For Clark, though, there is something somehow redeeming in having been able to look back at Monroe’s troubles and find a spark that could give life to new art. “Creating something out of something unfortunate feels productive,” she says. She gives a small, satisfied nod.’

On the American Songwriter website today, New York-based musician St Vincent explains how Marilyn’s writing inspired ‘Surgeon’, a track from her upcoming album, Strange Mercy:

‘Inspiration can come from unlikely places. Annie Clark, the Dallas-raised, Brooklyn-based musician who records as St. Vincent, was reading Marilyn Monroe’s recently published diaries when she came across a sentence that stood out to her: “Best finest surgeon,” the actress writes, “Strasberg waits to cut me open.”

“I thought that was an incredibly poetic line and a strange sentiment – wanting someone to come in and make that adjustment that will heal you,” says Clark, who adds that the troubled actress “was a highly intelligent woman and doesn’t get enough credit for being very powerful.” Clark pondered the line as she finished Monroe’s Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters, and eventually she used it as the chorus for “Surgeon,” a stand-out on Strange Mercy, her third album as St. Vincent. It begins at a dreamily unrushed pace, with Clark’s florid vocals filling the frame and her spidery guitarwork adding detail to the background. The tempo gradually tightens until the song mutates into a breakneck jam between Clark and gospel organist Bobby Sparks. When it sounds like the song might simply snap in half, “Surgeon” fades out abruptly. Roll credits.

It’s a more vigorous and abrasive sound than expected from St. Vincent, and the lyrics prove equally strained and edgy. Rather than cinematic and critical, that voice sounds like that of someone desperate to be cut open. “I took elements of what I knew about Marilyn Monroe and superimposed them with something that I knew personally,” Clark explains. “I think it’s all fair game – whatever makes the best and most compelling story with a sturdy emotional truth to it.” ‘