song: Savior (Piano Version)
artist: St. Vincent
album: MassEducation (2018)
writer: Annie Clark

acoustic piano: Thomas Bartlett
(vocal: Annie Clark)

This is a transcription of the piano version of the song, “Savior”, off the 2018 piano-voice album, MassEducation (see left video) that followed up the 2017 Masseduction album. The song spectacularly features (low-pitched) manually muted/prepared piano in the opening sections, which contrasts with the (high-pitched) arpeggio playing towards the end. Musically speaking, this is piece masters the art of dynamics, and hence conveys undertones of seduction, beauty, and darker connotations...

Also, check out the music video version, which is a slightly different version performed live (see video below).

“ [The ‘Please!’ phrase], god, I wrote when I was 16 … I was listening to Billie Holiday, and I had a little karaoke kind of machine, and I would just practice her licks and her runs. That melody was kind of born trying to follow along to Billie.
The song had tension and it needed release. And I was like, “oh, yeah, what about ‘Please!’ from x number of years ago”, and it just fit perfectly into the narrative and was the release that the verses and frieze needed. ” – St. Vincent (2019)