▲ St. Vincent puts her life story in the album. Provided by pbs.twimg.com

Musicians can be divided into two groups. People who are following the trend of contemporary society to gain popularity and others who seek their own music styles. St. Vincent seems to be the latter. This musician conveys messages to the public with her unorthodox music style. Her fourth album, St. Vincent, is not an exception. 

To many Koreans, St. Vincent might not be a familiar musician. Her eponymous fourth album, St. Vincent, ranks at 12 in the United States (U.S.) Billboard 200 and 21 in the United Kingdom (UK) Albums Chart. It is her highest charting album in both countries among other albums that she has released. St. Vincent is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Many critics analyze her music style as a combination of chamber rock, indie rock and pop. With her own music style, she seems to gain popularity from the maniacs. 

St. Vincent, which was released in February, contains many songs that are related to the life story of St. Vincent. It seems like she deliberately named the album with her own name. As a whole, each song on the album has very different rhythms, speeds and notes. Some of them are filled with electric guitar sounds, others have ringing sounds and still others have repetitive and fast speed rhythms. Most of her songs have implicit and diverse-meaning lyrics.

Some of the songs in the album are related with her impressive experience in life. The title song of the album, “Rattlesnake”, is about her experience walking in the desert. She uses the word, “sand”, several times to let listeners know it is about a desert. She seems to describe her feelings as she communes with nature, especially when she noticed a rattlesnake. She included the word, “oh”, numerous times as if she is trying to reflect her surprised emotion when she saw the rattlesnake. 

Other songs on the album seem to deal with her close ones or human beings. “I Prefer Your Love” talks about St. Vincent’s mother. It seems that she wrote this song when her mom was sick. She writes some lyrics of praying to God hoping that her mom would get better soon and asking her mom for forgiveness. A song titled, “Severed Crossed Fingers” portrays that humans have an ability to have hope even in the worst situation. She sings the song slowly with a determined tone. As crossed fingers symbolize luck, she uses the phrase often rather than saying the word, “hope”, directly in the song. 

The album, St. Vincent, might be uncomfortable to people who have a specific genre to which they like to listen. However, listening carefully to the songs in the album, the audience can quickly realize that her own music style helps to convey the lyrics of each song well. Even though it is somewhat vague and difficult to understand the lyrics, the songs contain St. Vincent’s life story. Every single song has its own story in it as St. Vincent even mentioned in an interview as a record that you could play at a funeral.