The power of a song is one thing, but the power of Swifties is quite another. St. Vincent – aka Texan alt-rock powerhouse Annie Clark – can testify to both matters. It was towards the latter half of the last decade that Clark went into the studio with Taylor Swift and producer Jack Antonoff and the trio wrote Swift’s song Cruel Summer together. It featured on the pop superstar’s 2019 album Lover and, seemingly, that was that.
Except that was not that - last year, on the back of Cruel Summer being performed at Swift’s record-breaking Eras shows, currently making their way round the UK, Swift fans caused the song to go viral. Swift’s record label Republic pretty much had no choice but to reissue it as a single, some four years after its initial release. Recently, Clark told this writer in an interview for Music Week what it was like seeing Swifties demonstrate their full might.
“The Taylor Swift Cruel Summer moment for me was just an absolute amazing testament to the incredible force of her amazing fans,” Clark said. “They took a song that was from many records ago and not a single at the time and just said, ‘No, we love this song, this song is a hit you guys’ and they marched it up the charts.”
- "I woke up three days later, in France, in this stupid castle, and I'm thinking: 'What just happened?'": How Stevie Nicks escaped the chaos of Fleetwood Mac and soared solo
- “You see people who are into the glamour and ego of it. Music has nothing to do with ego. Music is like being a bank clerk – it’s work”: How Kate Bush smashed the barriers and became a star like no other
The song became another chart-topper for Swift, reaching Number One in US chart the Billboard Hot 100. “It was so cool to see and I’ve certainly never been a part of anything like that,” Clark continued. “But also I haven’t really witnessed that in culture. You could maybe say Running Up That Hill with Kate Bush took fire and new fans were exposed to it but that’s not really the same thing. The Cruel Summer thing was sheer force and lightning in a bottle from her fans who just loved something into existence.”
It has been quite the year for Clark’s association pop titans as elsewhere, Olivia Rodrigo has been playing one of Clark’s custom-made Ernie Ball Music Man guitars on her spectacular Guts tour. “I love seeing one of my guitars being played by Olivia Rodrigo,” Clark said. “Seeing Olivia play it just fills my heart with joy but also I feel I see a lot of young women playing it so I feel like I’ve done my part in being like, ‘Play that guitar, go for it!’.”
Watch the video for the Clark and Taylor Swift team-up Cruel Summer below:
