“Broken Man” by St. Vincent

"Broken Man" was the first taste of All Born Screaming, St. Vincent's seventh album, and it rolls in like a storm front taking its sweet time. Annie Clark has called it a slow burn shaped like a climb up a mountain, and that's exactly how it moves: a coiled, twitchy verse that keeps stacking weight until the whole thing tips into a roar. She pointed to Goya's Black Paintings as the mood board, and the song digs at the raw, violent brokenness she figures all of us carry around inside.

The drums tell the story. Three separate drum tracks are layered in: one Clark programmed herself, one from Mark Guiliana and a third from Dave Grohl, who by her account comes in reckless and shoves it right to the edge. Justin Meldal-Johnsen plays bass, and Alex Da Corte directed the video.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.