This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something, I may earn a commission. Thanks for supporting me!
Length: ~2hrs, 16 lessons
My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
My one-liner takeaway: The ultimate goal of a songwriter is to serve the song, and the only way to do that is to be open to trying out all those ideas in your head.
I’ve listened to and enjoyed a few of St. Vincent songs, maybe just one or two. She’s a Grammy-winning solo artist and is very popular amongst the NPR-listener crowd. I might say she’s this generation’s David Bowie, but I don’t know enough about Bowie to make that assertion confidently. She starts off the class by saying anyone responsible for taking an idea to completion can benefit from this course. I wouldn’t go that far. Most of her course is her (sometimes brilliant) ramblings on her songwriting and editing process. It’s clear that it all makes sense in her head. She might struggle to find the words, and resolve to play a tune to make the point, finishing with a nod to the camera as if to say “there, you get it now too.” Some of her ramblings don’t land very well, like the firm assertion that happy songs are trash or other pretentious musings about the identities of St. Vincent and Annie Clark (her actual name).
Although I found much of the course awkward due to the lack of a structured thought process, there were some pieces of wisdom in there and it helps that the videos are regularly punctuated by her crooning vocals and masterful guitar picking. For example, for songwriting she gives the very practical advice that your song should have some epiphany, a realization for either the narrator or the listener. Another great tip was to play with an instrument you’re unfamiliar with to break out of a creative rut. Throughout the process of editing, she asks “does this serve the song?” and ruthlessly subtracts but isn’t shy to try something weird just for a sec to hear what it sounds like. Finally, another great point she makes that’s applicable to anyone is to be open to learning and putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation. She notes that the first time she worked with a choreographer, she resisted any attempts to do funky dance moves by insisting she couldn’t play at the same time. Eventually, she learned to love it and realized how emotionally powerful movement could be for her performances.
If you’d like to hear it directly from St. Vincent, check out her course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!
This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.