St. Vincent, whose real name is Annie Clark, had just come from a Barry’s Bootcamp class in West Hollywood when we got on the phone — she offered this immediately, unprompted, clocking that she was talking to an LGBTQ+ publication. “It’s spot on,” she says, laughing. “Just right on brand.” The timing felt apt: This was Pride Month, and Clark’s queerness has never been separate from her work — a progressive blend of alt-rock and experimental pop where razor-sharp guitars meet sugary melodies that keep turning dark — even when the world insisted on treating her queerness as a reveal.
Clark took home three Grammys in 2025 for “All Born Screaming,” including best alternative music album and best rock song for “Broken Man.” But what made headlines was her acceptance speech, when she thanked her wife and daughter and the internet erupted as if it were a confession. Except it wasn’t. “I did not in any way come out at the Grammys,” she says. Her identity, she notes, has been right there in the music all along.
Navigating what she calls that “dance” — being a rock artist, being a woman, being queer without letting queerness become a marketing beat or a footnote — has defined a remarkable 20-year run. Now, Clark is bringing that full vision to concert halls across the country during an orchestra tour that stemmed from a BBC Proms appearance at Royal Albert Hall in London in 2025 that left her immediately plotting how to do it again.
What does she want the queer fans filling that room to feel? “Beauty,” she says. “And catharsis. And acceptance.”
What does it feel like doing these orchestra shows at this point in your career?
I’m nowhere near done, god willing, but I always think my best work is ahead of me, not behind me. But in a weird way, doing this orchestra stuff was almost a career retrospective, because it forced me to look back on records that I don’t revisit. Not for any reason, except that they’re for other people. I’m onto the next thing as soon as I release something, so it’s kind of a career retrospective. It feels very heartening to look back and go, “I went a lot of places and I’ve made a lot of music, and now it can translate to this larger forum.”
Was this a sort of check-in point to look at where you’ve been to get to where you want to go next?
No. I mean, it had that effect, but the fact of it was that the BBC Proms does these amazing nights with more popular-leaning artists with the symphony, and so Rachel Eckroth, who I’ve been lucky enough to play with now for three years, is friends with Jules Buckley, a great conductor who has his own orchestra there and does a lot of these Proms events. That was in the works for a couple years. The BBC approached me about wanting to do a night at the Proms, and I did that. But basically the moment I stepped off stage, I was like, “We need to do this again. Where can we do this again?” I was just absolutely jonesing to do it more and to go to the States and just bring some glorious beauty. There was a 60-piece orchestra behind [me]. I wanna ride that wave of beauty.
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You’ve used the word beauty a few times when talking about this tour. What goes through your mind when you use that word?
Beauty’s hard won. Real beauty is radical, in the same way that hope is radical.
Your first album, 2007’s “Marry Me,” featured horns, strings and a choir. It was orchestral in its ambition. I’m wondering if doing these shows feels like returning to something that you’ve always wanted, or like something you finally have the credibility to ask for.
[Laughs.] Yeah, credibility — and, like, there’s a budget. You have no idea how scrappy those first records were. But in a way, it does feel like that, because certainly my second record was so influenced by film scores, Disney and Petrushka, Stravinsky and Debussy. It’s funny to me to hear a song like “Marrow,” which the inspiration for it was me just vibing on Petrushka. So, in this way, it sort of returned to being closer to its inspiration material. Like, this is the Stravinsky song I was always trying to write and now there’s money behind it. Money doesn’t always help art, but sometimes it does.
Have you been surprised by what these songs have become?
Well, I want to give a shout out to Rachel Eckroth, who did a number of arrangements, and some of my favorite arrangements, and Jules, who’s incredible. And then there were a couple other arrangers that I worked with that were from the Jules Buckley orchestra world. We made arrangements with little to no input from me, just here’s the song, just dream your dream on it, and then I’d listen to it and be blown away. Then I’d refine certain things and be surprised by certain things and want to keep them. It was a very collaborative process, obviously, but so much credit to the arrangers for making it cool because, in the wrong hands, anything could go pear-shaped. But they’ve just got taste and musicality and all the things. Especially in my earlier material, there are parts that were sort of intended to be symphonic in the first place, so that became about making them bigger.
“All Born Screaming” feels like your most unguarded record. There’s no persona. It’s also your first album that’s completely self-produced. And though you have acknowledged your queerness in the past, the public seems to think that you came out publicly during this cycle because of your acknowledgement of your wife while accepting your Grammy win.
No, there’s a difference, and this is probably going to sound very controversial, but I did not in any way come out at the Grammys. If anyone did a brief search history, I have revealed many facets of my personal life, like people I’ve dated. But my queerness is inherent in the work I do, because the lens that I have as a human being is one of all the things that growing up queer in America, in Texas, during a certain time, brings to you. You have to learn how to code switch. You have to learn how to try on identity, because the identity that you are is inherently hostile to your environment and your true identity. So you learn. That’s why I’m fascinated by things like the Stasi, or spycraft, because, let me say, for people of a certain age, growing up in certain places, you had to learn how to be covert, you had to learn how to be sly.
Everything has double meanings. Your sense of identity and who you are becomes a construct because you are constantly being made aware that it’s not OK. You’re very much aware that identity is a construct, because you have to construct one for yourself in order to allow yourself to be both armored and porous. So the idea that I came out at the Grammys is not true. I just always thought that my queerness was so intrinsic to my work, and so sublimated into everything that I create, that I wasn’t going, “Here’s a rainbow flag, let me capitalize on it in any sort of cynical way.” And we are in a different time, where identity is capital. I just have a different mindset about it.
Is it fair to say you’ve never let queerness be a footnote, but you’ve also never let it be the whole story?
Baby, it’s been a dance of a lifetime. How have I managed to figure out how to be a rock artist and a woman? You know what I mean? You just put your effort into the work, and hope that the work speaks and resonates with people, because that is the thing at the end of the day, you know?
When did you know that your music was resonating with queer people?
I started to see at the beginning, because it was very indie rock, it was straight dudes. And then, as a female artist, you always have — and this is not a slight — older men who were probably into post-punk who are still heads who want to come to the shows. So there was that. I would say a lot of my audience was largely male, and I felt like there was a market difference around “Masseduction.” I don’t know why. I’m sure that they’ve always been there.
It was all those pop bangers!
Yeah! When you think about it, for a long time, the gay male heroines for a whole lot of time in pop music have been straight women. I have gone up on stage in blonde wigs, or played with this idea of femininity, because to me, it was always a costume. There’s also this sort of strain of the idea of authenticity and indie rock. Like, the truth is coming out like a schlub and just playing guitar and singing. That is a mode, and in the right hands, that’s the best thing in the world, but also it’s equally authentic for me to put on a blonde wig and sublimate and express the transformation of me healing the wounds of the father. It’s equally an authentic expression.
Have we entered a new era of you being more open about your queerness?
I mean, I never was not openly queer. I think it just really entered the conversation in a big way 12 years ago. In terms of music press, if you were asking, yeah, I was clear about it from the third record or something. You can’t get gayer than, like, a wife and a child.
This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.