St. Vincent

With her literate, emotionally intricate songwriting and inventive guitar playing, St. Vincent's Annie Clark excels at subverting rock and pop conventions. A Berklee School of Music student whose love of grunge acts like Nirvana and Soundgarden inspired her to learn guitar, she introduced her genre-bending approach on 2007's Marry Me, which fused elements of indie, rock, electronic, and jazz in surprising ways. From there, her increasingly accomplished albums revealed the breadth and depth of her music. As the years passed, she achieved a rare balance of critical and commercial success: Clark made her chart debut with the complex storytelling of 2009's Actor; became the first solo female artist to win the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album in 20 years with 2014's icy, witty St. Vincent; and cracked the Billboard Top Ten with the anti-pop of 2017's Grammy-winning MASSEDUCTION. On 2021's Daddy's Home, she made the warmth and sleaze of the early '70s her own while continuing to challenge her listeners and herself.