St. Vincent’s new single “New York,” presumably off of an as-yet-unannounced new album to be released at some point, makes prodigious use of the word “motherfucker.” It’s an alternately intimate and nostalgic example of using profanity as more than just the empty linguistic refuge of the poorly educated:
Annie Clark, the musical force behind St. Vincent, went on PRX’s Song Exploder podcast to discuss the song, and that she’s just a big fan of the f-word in general. “I get a lot of pleasure from saying ‘fuck.’ I love that word. It’s so satisfying. It’s such a satisfying word to say,” she says. “I just love the idea of using really blue language as a term of endearment … my mother would be horrified, but I’ve been cursing like a sailor since I was eight …to me, ‘motherfucker’ says I know you, inside and out, and you know me.” So yeah, the song’s a real motherfucker, and you can hear Clark breaking down the process of writing it below.