When St. Vincent released the lead single of her upcoming seventh album, All Born Screaming, in March, the immediate consensus among critics and fans was that the avant-rocker was back to her roots. Following 2017’s pop-leaning Masseduction and 2021’s funked-up Daddy’s Home, the singer’s sound had seemingly strayed further and further away from the spiky and weird rock that originally shot her to stardom in the early 2010s. But with the wailing guitar on “Broken Man,” she was suddenly back — heavier and harder than ever.
And indeed, St. Vincent — real name Annie Clark — has said in interviews that the new project features some of her “darkest” songs to date, with lyrics that swirl around living and dying, and straight-edge rock production remniscent of Nine Inch Nails and Tori Amos, her earliest inspirations. But these sonic influences that have long inhabited her music, from 2015’s self-titled to 2011’s Strange Mercy. In the lead-up to All Born Screaming, out April 26, we compiled 10 of her hardest rock songs where we first saw this vision.