安妮·克拉克

Anne Erin Clark (born September 28, 1982), known professionally as St. Vincent, is an American musician and singer-songwriter. Her guitar-playing has been praised for its melodic style and use of distortion. In 2023, Rolling Stone named Clark the 26th-greatest guitarist of all time.

Raised in Dallas, St. Vincent began her music career as a member of choral rock band the Polyphonic Spree. She was also a member of Sufjan Stevens' touring band before forming her own band in 2006. Her debut solo studio album, Marry Me, was released in 2007; it was followed by Actor (2009) and Strange Mercy (2011). In 2012, St. Vincent released Love This Giant, an album made in collaboration with David Byrne of Talking Heads. Her fourth studio album, St. Vincent (2014), received widespread acclaim from critics and was named album of the year by Slant Magazine, NME, The Guardian and Entertainment Weekly. She collaborated with producer and songwriter Jack Antonoff for her albums Masseduction (2017) and Daddy's Home (2021) and self-produced her seventh studio album All Born Screaming (2024).

St. Vincent produced Sleater-Kinney's ninth studio album The Center Won't Hold (2019) and co-wrote Taylor Swift's Billboard Hot 100 number-one single "Cruel Summer". She also directed a segment in the horror anthology film XX (2017), and co-wrote and starred in the psychological thriller film The Nowhere Inn (2020). Her accolades include six Grammy Awards, three of which are for Best Alternative Music Album, tying the record for wins in that category.

Early life

Clark was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on September 28, 1982, to Sharon Christine and Richard "Rick" Clark. Her mother is a social worker and administrator for a nonprofit organization, and her stepfather works in corporate tax administration. Her parents divorced when she was 3, and when she was 7, she moved with her mother and two older sisters to Dallas, Texas. She has said that a 23andMe DNA test revealed her ancestry to be 80% Irish and 20% Ashkenazi Jewish, via one of her grandmothers. Clark was raised Catholic and Unitarian Universalist.

Clark has four brothers and four sisters from her parents' blended families.

As a child, Clark was fond of Ritchie Valens and the movie La Bamba. When she was five, her mother gave her a red plastic guitar from a Target store for Christmas. She began playing her first real guitar at age 12, taking classes with Tony Hyatt, a local guitar shop employee, and worked some of her teenage years as a roadie for her aunt and uncle, the guitar-vocal jazz duo Tuck & Patti. In 2001, she graduated from Lake Highlands High School, where she participated in theater and the school's jazz band, and was a classmate of actor Mark Salling.

She attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, studying with professor Lauren Passarelli. She left after three years, feeling that art institutions such as Berklee were sometimes focused more on the aesthetics of art than the product. In retrospect, she said, "I think that with music school and art school, or school in any form, there has to be some system of grading and measurement. The things they can teach you are quantifiable. While all that is good and has its place, at some point you have to learn all you can and then forget everything that you learned in order to actually start making music."