St Vincent is “so amazed at Taylor’s fans” for making her Taylor Swift collab Cruel Summer a belated hit

A collaboration with Taylor Swift is a dream come true for most modern-day musicians, at least in terms of getting your music heard by a sizable chunk of the entire world’s population.

Now, with millions of monthly listeners and numerous award-winning albums to her name, it’s not like St. Vincent is desperate for the clout. That said, Taylor Swift is quite literally the biggest artist in the world right now, so when Annie Clark partnered with her for her mega-hit Cruel Summer, it would’ve been a dream come true nonetheless.

• READ MORE: Five Essential St. Vincent Songs That Guitarists Need to Hear

In an interview in the new issue of Rolling Stone, Clark recalls how her collaboration with the world’s biggest music star came about, and how it became a fan favourite despite never being released as a single.

“I don’t mind people asking me about the song,” she says. “I know it’s a ripper of a song. And I am so amazed at Taylor’s fans because they took a song that was from many records ago and they were like, ‘No, this is a hit.’ And they marched it up the charts and made it a worldwide hit.

“I’m just like, God bless her fans. That’s the coolest thing. I’ve never seen anything like it, really. Yeah, Cruel Summer was a track I worked on with Jack [Antonoff], and it found its way to Taylor, and she wrote it.”

Cruel Summer appeared as the second track on Taylor Swift’s 2019 album Lover, and at the time of writing boasts well over two billion streams on Spotify. It’s also a staple of Swift’s ongoing Eras Tour. Notably, it wasn’t released as a single until 2023, four years after the original release of Lover.

St. Vincent also touched on the belated success of Cruel Summer in a recent interview with NME.

“That was crazy,” she said. “I mean, I always thought in the context of that record, like, ‘That should be a single, it’s a great song.’

“And I don’t even think it was a single; it just was a fan favourite. And it’s like the fans just decided: ‘No, this is your hit song.’ Which is so wild and so modern, you know. That was just a real bonus Jonas there. And I mean, that’s one hell of a fanbase.”

When it was put to her that Swifties had been able to turn a non-single into a Number One, Clark responded: “I mean, changing world economies, let’s go!”

Taylor Swift is currently in Europe on her ongoing Eras Tour. With all the furore surrounding the trek, we recently broke down the varied and unique instruments Swift has been playing onstage.