St. Vincent - MASSEDUCTION (5th album, October 13 2017)

I'd be paranoid about being The Duke in his Domain'd

i'd still eat the interviewer's apple pie, though

brad otm, if you're going to be awkward or aggressive just own it and make hay. that note is just so pathetic and stupid insofar as their career is concerned

honestly this account was more baffling to me than anything, because the idea of "(experiencing) sustained dislike as an adult" is more or less the ambient oxygen of my daily life, and the idea of this being a life-jolting occurrence is completely alien to my life -- the same way that I can accept that some people have synesthesia where, like, the number 6 is blue, but I cannot personally feel it. like, does she not have coworkers? roommates? Twitter?

i've only been interviewed about my art once but i can easily imagine having deep contempt for the entire experience despite it being "part of my job"

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Tuesday, January 29, 2019 8:18 PM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Then don't do the interview! It can be a deeply disappointing experience for all involved (I'm an editor in chief tbh). Again, St. Vincent agreed to this interview. So she had three choices: 1) cancel the interview, 2) do it but be "weird", so that your "weirdness" is noted and mentioned (success), or 3) do it and be nice. Being nice shouldn't be very hard, even though all of those three are legitimate options imo.

maybe this interviewer is awkward and uncool! the pass-agg note suggests it's a possibility...

it has almost nothing to do with whether the artist in question is an asshole or not bc who gives a shit, we're both doing a job

and i'd like to add that sometimes you have to pick up the slack if the person you're working with does a shitty job, and wouldn't merit documenting it in a mini-essay if it were happening in say an office building

by that i mean giving off bad vibes, idk. that note is such a weird thing to publicly post. is she trying to get fired?

xxp -- also, apologizing to an interview the day later for how one came off is something that I would guess is not that common. even if it's damage control and not genuine worry, from what I have heard it doesn't seem like an all that common form of damage control

she's a freelancer xp

right of course...it's weird self-sabotage either way

(if you want to make art for public consumption, you're going to have to talk about that art with journalists)

This hasn't been true for a few years now at least

if you're writing features for a major magazine you have probably earned more online candor than the average person

like, a lot of writers have mentioned similar experiences with st. vincent, all of whom are still writers, and whose careers are if anything going even better

I agree that the note is very strange, drawing way more attention to a fairly typical write-around celebrity profile than it would otherwise get (it's fucking GQ, the photos of Clark in $5000 coats are the point, not the text) and making the writer the story when she shouldn't be. But this is part of a pattern of behavior for Clark, as various interviews from her last few press cycles - not to mention those Instagram videos - have revealed.

the last graf of the note is baffling, especially this:

When you're a kid and you have no control over your time, you're constantly forced to be with people (kids, mainly) who find you lame and annoying, which is painful. The primary perk of being an adult is that you have the agency to avoid these situations. Until you don't.

like when you... become a journalist

it's called adult privilege

I mean yes it's true that I can avoid these situations, if I woke up on a pile of money and used that money to become a hermit

I smell truffle fries

i smell an edit of the challenger disaster mission control video where "FIDO, ..." is replaced with interview questions for "st. vincent"

tbh bc of like... the media ecosystem, and also instagram, i know this writer is married and lives in a beautiful loft, and when i read that last paragraph about never having to engage with people who dislike you, i thought "wow you sure are married and live in a beautiful loft"

not my finest moment

I like Brad's response

Also, I don't really know how to explain this, but in Clark's defence, I had an extremely intrusive question lobbed at me in 2006 by a lovely and talented writer who I admire both professionally and personally, and the question plunged me into an incredible state of distress, and I spent the rest of the allotted hour with my mind pinwheeling about both the audacity of the question, and how this writer obtained the information to ask it. It was completely off-putting and it didn't just spoil the interview itself but my feelings about interviews in general. I would imagine that Clark might have had a similar experience, except probably even more intrusive, given her high profile and her desire to keep private her personal life.

Ugh, that's bad news - and bad form.

I once sent an interview subject an email a day after we spoke in person, with the subject line "Intrusive Personal Question", because there was something I felt I had to ask but knew would have derailed the interview. I wound up not using her answer in the piece, because she explained her reasons for not talking about it in other interviews and they made perfect sense to me.

i don't understand you folks who think that's just how some artists are and they are totally in their rights to be that way toward a journalist

not bragging, as i'm sure plenty here have done more, but i've probably interviewed a couple thousand musicians in my life, some above SV's level, many at her level and many below her level, and if that account of her behavior at the interviews is accurate, it's as bad or worse than anyone i've dealt with. maybe i've just been lucky? i doubt it.

it's very simple: if she doesn't want to do the interview, she should tell her publicist she doesn't want to do it. she shouldn't treat another human being like shit. my 6-year-old knows that.

(again, i agree that the writer probably should've kept all this to herself.)

I don't necessarily think Clark is in the right (def not with the sunglasses bit, but at the party? sure), just saying this level of animosity / aloofness / suspicion of journalists is par for the course, in my experience (as a writer & as an artist).

it's very simple: if she doesn't want to do the interview, she should tell her publicist she doesn't want to do it. she shouldn't treat another human being like shit. my 6-year-old knows that.

it often isn't very simple - artists have obligations to their labels & the people working for them. they don't care if you're averse to interviews, and you have a responsibility to uphold your promotional duties. and again, just from that note, the behavior described is hardly abhorrent.

OK, I just went back and read the piece again and you're right ... I probably overstated it when I said she seems awful. I think this part really jumped out at me the first time:

“Yes.” I wait for more, but instead she pulls her phone out of her pocket and starts typing. “Keep asking away.”

She sounds like she's just completely wiped out and over the touring/press cycle, which I get. And I think she gets it, too, as evidenced by her reaching out to the journalist the next day.

This still sounds worse than 99% of my interactions with artists, who generally seem to understand the mutually beneficial transaction, and know how to set aside their current annoyances and deal with another person in a reasonably pleasant way.

(Lastly: I know SV has lots of people wanting her to do press even if she doesn't want to. That excuse doesn't fly with me. She knew that was part of the deal when she signed a record contract or whatever. If she doesn't want to do press that bad, she should find a business partner that won't force her to do it.)

(To put that last point another way: You're right, flappy, it often isn't very simple. But SV's at a level where she could make it simple if she wanted to.)

it often isn't very simple - artists have obligations to their labels & the people working for them. they don't care if you're averse to interviews, and you have a responsibility to uphold your promotional duties. and again, just from that note, the behavior described is hardly abhorrent.

― flappy bird, Tuesday, January 29, 2019 9:54 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No doubt you kill-filed me or w/e. But this still doesn't in any way excuse you from being nice, or even ok-ish, to someone.

tbh bc of like... the media ecosystem, and also instagram, i know this writer is married and lives in a beautiful loft, and when i read that last paragraph about never having to engage with people who dislike you, i thought "wow you sure are married and live in a beautiful loft"

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Tuesday, January 29, 2019 9:02 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

:-(

Since almost everything StV does professionally is a pose (and therefore a choice) it seems normal to think that the decision to act like a dick was not also deliberate BUT there are a lot of circumstantial, relationship or mental health reasons that someone may be acting badly. Having said that this does seem bad in a very particularly rehearsed way.

this usually boils down, for me, to 'is the artist making good enough art to justify their interview antics'

with st vincent the answer is a massive resounding no, hence i am with the journalist 100%

I would never kill file you, LBI! I don't even know how to do that...

This all weird reasoning imo since the narrator here hasn’t shared anything that makes her sound anything other than maybe wiped out and a bit standoffish and I really don’t know how to take her “do you like doing this?” question, it does not come off on paper as an indicator of anything other than someone who may have just had some recent bad experiences with journalists or simply some shit going on in their life. I have no reason to trust this enough to make a judgement of SV as a person and the level at which one appreciates her art is no reason to judge her more harshly either, I mean come on.

(To put that last point another way: You're right, flappy, it often isn't very simple. But SV's at a level where she could make it simple if she wanted to.)

Is she? I genuinely don't know - she's an amphitheater act, not on a major label, not a household name... the way the music industry is, I don't think there are many artists that can forego interviews or a typical promotional cycle that would make someone like Clark weary w/o letting down their employers and their expectations.

yer right. also, fgti's story about the curveball question is horrifying. xp

there's also the aspect that the entire masseduction rollout (videos, etc.) was based on a sort of sardonic self-awareness of the press cycle, of which that question would be a natural part of

s Clark neared the end of recording, she turned some attention to the next phases—packaging, publicity, performance. She has observed that, when she makes the rounds to local media outlets or on cattle-call press junkets, she is repeatedly asked the same questions, many of them dumb ones. “You become a factory worker,” she said. “When you have to say something over and over, there’s a festering self-loathing. No better way to feel like a fraud.”

She’d made what she was calling an interview kit, a highly stylized short film, which consists of her answering typical questions. She sits in a chair with her legs crossed, in a short pink skirt and a semitransparent latex top before a Day-Glo green backdrop, with a camera and a sound crew of three female models in heels, dog collars, dominatrix hoods, and assless/chestless minidresses. A screen reads, “Insert light banter,” and then Clark reappears, saying, with a strained smile, “It’s good to see you again. Of course I remember you. Yah, good to see you. How’s—how’s your kid?”

There follows a series of questions and answers, with the former presented as text onscreen—generic placeholders:

Q. Insert question about the inspiration for this record.

A. I saw a woman alone in her car singing along to “Great Balls of Fire,” and I wanted to make a record that would prevent that from ever happening again.

Q. Insert question about how much of her work is autobiographical.

A. All of my work is autobiographical, both the factual elements of my life and the fictional ones.

Q. Insert question about being a woman in music.

A. What’s it like being a woman in music? . . . Very good question.

The camera cuts to her interlaced fingers. She wears paste-on fingernails, each with a letter. They spell out “F-U-C-K-O-F-F.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/28/st-vincents-cheeky-sexy-rock

(xp -- also s/"a natural part")

caveat: I have not participated in many interviews in my life, and I was probably a mediocre interviewee and not anyone doing interviews for publication. I've seen a lot of one-on-one and roundtable live interviews -- notably a different thing than one done for publication -- and generally there are two types: the light questioning with extended answers, and ones that are more "transactional"

it seems weird to me that this kind of drops in the middle of the note on how the interview went

Midway through Clark turned to me and asked, with audible hostility, "Do you like doing this?" (There's a long pause in the tape here.) I said something evasive and steered the conversation back to modular synths.

why be evasive? imo that's the basis of why interviews can be an inherently hostile enterprise, it's an unnatural conversation style with no reciprocity. even if you're going to fuck up the answer, reciprocate

yer right. also, fgti's story about the curveball question is horrifying. xp

The question was, "Who's a better kisser? Algernon Featherwilly, or Benjamin Powderbottom?"

Years later I am still traumatized

why be evasive?

Seriously. The obvious answer is "usually, yes." I mean, I've never - in 22 years - had an interview disintegrate into outright hostility (I have had one person hang up on me), but if she's putting it out there, grab it and see what happens.

w/r/t whether SV is at a level to make her music without doing press - or more precisely, doing press she wants to do, when she wants to do it - i mean, i really have no idea how much $ she makes, what kind of financial obligations she has, whether she gives a shit if people buy tickets or not, etc., etc., not to mention the various promotional pressures she feels.

but just generally speaking, i would imagine Annie could either (a) find partners to help her start her own label and release music that way, a la Wilco, or (b) tell labels straight away she wants to control the press stuff, and if they don't like it, they can go sign someone else. i'm quite sure there'd be labels that would love to work with her anyway.

until she does one of those things, she signs up for putting some control of press obligations in someone else's hands.

and she can handle that any way she wants, of course. but taking out her frustrations about it on someone who is just trying to do their job isn't a great look.

i thought "wow you sure are married and live in a beautiful loft"

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Tuesday, January 29, 2019 2:02 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not my finest moment

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Tuesday, January 29, 2019 2:02 PM (four hours ago

no this is a keeper

There's literally nothing keeping St. Vincent from saying "I'm just not gonna do press for this record"

Even if her records aren't doing Adele numbers, she's got producer gigs, festival appearances, gear deals, movie syncs in the fuckin Twilight movies ... she's prolly got racks

No, you always have to keep doing press, esp at that level, the artist is a business investment and you can't make decisions like that without having arguments with labels et al.

It's people like Will Oldham who have that luxury

I interviewed her around the summer of 2010 and I just have fond memories of our conversation, tbh.

so having just come from a concert by an artist who was extremely anxious and uncomfortable on stage, and having belatedly realized my wondering if it was some kind of "performance" was both a natural human instinct and ludicrously overanalytical, i'm possibly more inclined than typically towards the theory that ms. clark was having a shitty day and reacted to it by being an asshole.

Maybe so

What’s your excuse for the interviewer posting a weird tell-all on her Tumblr? Was she also just having a shitty day?

Maybe her first shitty day (as an adult!). That last paragraph is something else.