St Vincent has used her appearance on the latest cover of Guitar World magazine to ‘take the piss’ out of their ‘sexist history’.
The musicians’ magazine has been known to often have scantily clad and nude women on its cover – something which St Vincent’s Annie Clark took on board when choosing her favourite outfit of a bikini-effect t-shirt.
“I did a quick Google search of women on the cover, and all I really saw was girls in bikinis holding guitars like they’ve never held a guitar before,” she told the magazine for their January 2017 issue. “I started thinking about that and just wanted to make my own absurdist comment on it. I couldn’t really let it slide without poking a bit of fun and taking the piss a little!”
Here I am wearing my favorite outfit on the cover of Guitar World in January. https://t.co/ZUh62RNT7s pic.twitter.com/Teiuo22Tc0
— St. Vincent (@st_vincent) December 20, 2016
Speaking of their decision to end the practice of putting nude models on the cover, general manager of publishers Bill Amstutz told Reverb: “The main driver of this decision was economic, but bikini models were outdated, and we didn’t want to associate the brand with what could easily be viewed as sexist, as a misrepresentation of women guitar players, or that women in general may find offensive.”
Meanwhile, Clark also revealed that the new St Vincent album would be released next Spring and be her ‘deepest, boldest’ work yet.
“I’ve been able to step back and reflect and not just be in the tour, record, tour, record cycle that I’ve been in for about 10 years,” she said. “I think it’ll be the deepest, boldest work I’ve ever done.”
She added: “I feel the playing field is really open for creative people to do whatever you want, and that risk will be rewarded — especially now that we have such high stakes form a political and geo-political standpoint. The personal is political and there the political can’t help but influence the art. And only music that has something pretty real to say is gonna cut the mustard.”
Her self-titled previous album was named NME’s Album Of The Year 2014.