Video: St. Vincent – “Fast Slow Disco”

Directed by Zev Deans. Remix out now. The original “Slow Disco” is available on MASSEDUCTION.

“Don’t it beat a slow dance to death?” I love that line. “A slow dance to death” is a pretty apt metaphor for the mundane experience of adulthood. We’re all racing toward death, some more slowly than others. Who wins? What changes do we need to make to get more out of life?

But that line also works as a commentary on the remix itself. It’s way more fun to bug out to a banger than to sway in place to a slow jam. Isn’t this version a lot better than the original version? Yes, it beats it to death.

Of course, in the context of the song, it’s pretty clear that the death in question is the end of a relationship.

there’s blood in my ears
and a fool in the mirror
and the bay of mistakes
couldn’t get any clearer

Annie Clark told Pitchfork that it’s about “how the life you’re actually living and the life that you should be living are running parallel, and how one haunts the other.”

And in a recent Beats 1 interview she credits Taylor Swift for inspiring the remix: “I don’t want to start a weird rumour or anything, but I swear to God, you know because Jack Antonoff’s bros with Taylor Swift because they work together a lot, and I feel like Taylor was like, ‘You should make this a pop song.’ I know that she wholeheartedly supported that idea and I think the genesis of the idea was her.”

The video features our hero grinding around a sweaty club with a bunch of hunky bears. And nobody’s ghosting anyone on this dance floor.

St. Vincent: web, twitter, amazon, apple, spotify, wiki.

Video: St. Vincent – “Fast Slow Disco” (live)

From Later… with Jools Holland on BBC Two (5 June 2018).

Audio: St. Vincent – “Slow Disco”

From MASSEDUCTION, out now on Loma Vista.