St. Vincent has some strong feelings about John Mayer’s hit 2003 song “Daughters.”
When asked in a recent interview with Kerrang! what she felt the “worst song ever written” was, St. Vincent chose “Daughters,” deeming it to be archaic and misogynistic. “It’s just so hideously sexist but it pretends to be a love song, but it’s really, really retrograde and really sexist,” she said. “And I hate it… It’s so deeply misogynistic, which would be fine if you owned that, but it pretends like it’s sweet.”
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She’s definitely onto something here — Mayer essentially takes the whole song to warn fathers that if they’re bad to their daughters, then they will create more issues for the men the girls will eventually date. He uses his own failed relationship as evidence, lamenting in the first verse that his partner is “just like a maze / Where all of the walls all continually change.” Later on in the bridge, Mayer sings “On behalf of every man/ Looking out for every girl/ You are the God and the weight of her world/ So fathers be good to your daughters…”
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg, with a few puzzling stanzas about gender and relationships baked into the warm, acoustic-centered arrangement. It won Song of the Year at the 2005 Grammys.
St. Vincent’s remarks about “Daughters” came in the midst of Kerrang!’s “10 Songs That Changed My Life” segment, where she spotlighted songs from Sonic Youth, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Steely Dan, and more that had an impact on her. Her disdain for “Daughters” is not the only hot take she’s offered recently — back in April, she called covers of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” the “the worst thing in the world.”
St. Vincent’s most recent album was this year’s All Born Screaming, and she’s gearing up for the next leg of her North American tour this week. Get tickets to see St. Vincent here.