Today's Song of the Day, as chosen by Kevin Cole, host of Drive Time on KEXP, is "Pay Your Way In Pain" by St. Vincent, from the 2021 album Daddy's Home on Loma Vista Recordings.
On her sixth album, Daddy’s Home, St. Vincent (real name: Annie Clark) looks to the past, specifically the ‘70s, to inspire the present.
“There’s something interesting about what the early ‘70s were, and the parallels between then and now – even socially,” Clark told NME. “You had the idealism of the ‘60s come crashing down and the flower child thing had dissipated and made room for a way grittier, more nihilistic, more ‘dirt under the fingernails’ vibe. The economy was crazy, there was a whole [lot] of social unrest and that doesn’t sound too dissimilar from now as we’re watching institutions of power being dismantled and people upset with the status quo. People are trying to navigate what it is to just survive.”
Today's Song of the Day captures that theme of endurance. “I feel like we live in a world where we’re often asked to choose between surviving and dignity. Part of it is like blues for 2021. It’s also about how there’s nothing that I’ve done in my life that didn’t involve some sort of struggle. Some of those struggles are really worthy ones to have and something great can come of them.”
