’s “..At the Holiday Party,” a track from her album “Daddy’s Home,” which takes a look at the other side of seasonal revelry — that feeling of being alone in the crowd and trying to put on a festive face while living a life of quiet desperation. It’s a song for anyone who, in the midst of people concerned about tracking their lost shipments, is actually losing their shit … or just who, like the song’s narrator, is able to pick out the partygoer who’s just barely keeping it together.
“It definitely had to be a holiday party. Thats when people are really imbibing and stuff like that,” says Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, discussing the song with. The kind of encounter described in “…At the Holiday Party” could happen any time of year, theoretically, but a Christmas party is “a completely different feeling, I think. Because the season is extra reflective, when it’s melancholy, it’s extra melancholy. We’re not talking about a Rose Day summer soiree.
The narrator of the song is seeing behind the facade of a friend who may be dealing with unfulfilled dreams as well as solitude , and whose Gucci purse’s self-medicinal contents betray what her face is working overtime to conceal.“I’ve definitely been on both sides of that,” says Clark. “I’ve certainly been the girl who’s revealing herself by the things she’s trying to hide with consumption of all kinds. But I’ve also been the person who has seen that.
“To me, it was sort of a feminine version of ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ for 2021. That was in some ways an ode to the Stones, a little bit,” she says. Listen to the track, above, and read the lyrics, below. And may human connection be all the Christmas opiate the masses need.That’s when I saw your face crackingSo no one sees you not gettingOr did those lights go out on Broadway?Pills and Juuls and speedNot getting what you need, need