As St. Vincent pulls out her latest “theme” for what will be her sixth album, Daddy’s Home, we’re bombarded once more with an “awful” truth. At least, awful for those still determined to say that New York is never really “over.” But if it was the vibrant “hotbed” of “creativity” everyone still living there tells themselves it is, why must we invariably be taken back to the 1970s or some other such twentieth century period in the city’s history in order to be reminded of how “great” it is?
Even St. Vincent’s 2018 revamp of “Slow Disco,” “Fast Slow Disco”–which was shot at a faux gay club (rendered as such in the straightest bar of them all, Saint Vitus)–relies on a certain 90s/early 00s sensibility. The writhing of bodies sweating up against one another in one orgiastic mass is, quite simply, not likely to become the norm again in that town. At least not during the long-standing after effects of COVID paranoia. And when we think about how AIDS in the gay community effectively ended up sanitizing homosexuals into the “designer” era of gay that arose in the 90s with “ultra clean” clubs, overpriced cocktails and a fetishization of the “straight male look,” it’s easy to see that the same sort of “keep your distance” vibe will follow with corona. Which means the “grit” and “realness” NY so likes to think it promotes will remain a thing tied up with the nostalgia for the past. Like the time in the 70s before AIDS (or other pandemics) was even a thought in people’s minds.
From the moment St. Vincent released her teaser for Daddy’s Home (an Electra complex-oriented moniker inspired by her own father’s recent release from prison), as well as the first single begat by the record, “Pay Your Way in Pain,” it was evident she was going for a 70s aesthetic. Specific to the 70s in New York. Manifest by her running up the stairwell of some dingy building in a wig and trench coat. As she makes it to the hallway of the floor she’s looking for, the sound of a phone distantly ringing becomes louder. She is frantic. She must find it.
When she finally reaches the room with the small table and rotary phone placed atop it, she puts her shoes down on the surface as she picks up the receiver. The vague fire escape of the building is briefly within the frame as she responds, “Hello.” A voice offers in return, “Hello Annie.” Her Christian name. This is serious. And it actually conjures up the idea of little “Annie Clark” making her way to the big city for the first time–or at least for the first time with the intent to “make it” there. Wanting, like so many others, to be “a part of it” that she went so far as to take a stage name that honors a major institution there, St. Vincent’s Hospital. This selection, however, was ultimately inspired by a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds song called “There She Goes my Beautiful World.”
Re-creating such an “origin story” of living in NYC before hitting the big time (à la Madonna) is rife to be set against the backdrop of the 70s. After all, it was one of the last memorable decades when the arts scene in New York was still experimental and unapologetic enough to be something resembling innovative. Now, with its constant concern about being politically correct and touching on an ever-ephemeral zeitgeist, art is too contrived, too polished in that town. Even when doing its best to pose as rough-hewn. But like the institution of higher learning St. Vincent dropped out of (Berklee College of Music in Boston) in order to gain “real” experience and to make “real” music, New York has actually become that college one should avoid if they want to create anything truly authentic. Something that won’t be graded or quantified or measured against what’s trending.
In the 70s, New York continued to remain open to this notion, which is in part why that decade is continually romanticized. Why people like Fran Lebowitz are still listened to as they regale others with stories about it. It helps keep the hope alive in New York. The hope that, one day–somehow, some way, the 70s will magically reappear. Or New York will magically de-commercialize itself again as a result of citywide bankruptcy and the abject poverty that tends to follow.
But how many times does one need to be told?: those days are gone. Never to be recaptured, not even by St. Vincent doing a 1970s shtick for her album’s narrative. And yes, it’s specifically meant to showcase a sound inspired by the early 70s, hence the costuming and auditory landscape of St. V’s first single, “Pay Your Way in Pain.” That title, to be sure, is the mantra still ingrained in those who move to New York, telling themselves that the insufferable nature of living there is part of what makes it so “wonderful” and “unique.” Code words for mentally damaging and normalizing shitty behavior–yet isn’t that just oh so “inspiring”? It certainly is to St. Vincent as she sits down at a piano with psychedelic colors that pour over her before revealing her in 70s-style, “gritty” cinematography that dimly lights her sitting at a piano with a decanter of hard liquor next to a lone glass. Throwing her coat off and taking hold of the beverage, a few introductory notes briefly lead us to believe this is going to be some somber number best suited for an empty piano bar before it leads into an opening that sounds like a riff on the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).”
The “funky” rhythm quickly negates our original expectations as we cut to St. V bathed in colorful lights that accent her leisure suit look. In that blonde wig from the promo (minus the black strand flourishes), she proceeds to paint us a stagflation portrait with the lyrics, “I went to the store, I was feelin’ kinda hungry/But I didn’t have the money and the shelves were all empty/So I went to the bank to ch-ch-ch-check my checking/The man looked at my face, said, ‘We don’t have a record.’”
An underwater effect is lent to her voice as she sings, “You know what I want/Keep the rest, baby, ah, ah/I wanna be loved.” That’s not really the type of thing that’s going to happen in New York (because people there can’t love if you can’t “give” them something “valuable”)…unless, of course, one becomes famous. The sort of fame specific to NY in which, yes, you’re known internationally, but, for whatever reason, you possess a more hyper-local variety of fame. And that, to “them,” is more prized than being recognized anywhere else.
As the psychedelia meets karaoke video backdrop vibe continues, it must be said that, more than channeling New York in the 70s, St. Vincent looks like she’s doing her best to imitate the Italodisco stylings of a Raffaella Carrà video. But, of course, the non-Italian Italian Americans of New York probably aren’t familiar with her; the extent of them being in touch with their “heritage,” after all, reached a “zenith” when Lady Gaga acted as a guidette in the music video for “Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say).”
And as she caterwauls in a manner that acts as a subversive imitation of Donna Summer’s own moans in “I Feel Love,” St. V persists in seeming to describe the average day-to-day in New York as: “Stand up, sit down, hands up, break down.” Yet where once this seemed “tolerable” and “glamorous” in the 70s, it now only feels like utter madness to keep partaking of “the scene” for not even the tradeoff of legitimately cheap rent (as opposed to talk of how much “better” prices have gotten with Covid “driving people out of the city”) and a community of artists that aren’t selling shit on Society6.
This is precisely why St. Vincent and many others will continue to revert to the 70s as a backdrop for the New York they still want to believe in. Couldn’t stop believing in if they tried. Because delusion is so often contingent upon a collective ideology. And New York, as a collective, helps persevere in fortifying their delusion by feeding off the nostalgia of “better times” in the city’s history. Periods that were rather grim but are now retrospectively looked upon as: “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
Whereas living in a Freedom Tower-era New York where no one reads (but everyone writes), the pervasive ads are increasingly relegated to screens and the name of the game is a “good job” instead of just getting by in order to have time to make art is, full-stop, the worst of times. So sure, it’s no wonder those in pop culture with an inexplicable hard-on for NY insist on portraying it in a twentieth century manner. It’s the only way to keep the town on life support in the twenty-first.
