We didn’t know it was possible, but now we love St. Vincent even more. The “Digital Witness” singer, a.k.a. Annie Clark, was recently asked to design her own a guitar for instrument brand Ernie Ball. Well, Annie took that opportunity and made a major statement for women in music: she designed a guitar that’s made for a woman to play.
Annie’s guitar, which will be released in March, is more lightweight and with a thinner waist than most guitars. As Annie put it, “There’s room for a breast. Or two.”
Annie explained how she designed the guitar in an interview with Guitar World.
“For me a guitar that is not too heavy is really important because I’m not a very big person. I can’t even play a Sixties Strat or Seventies Les Paul,” she said. “I would need to travel with a chiropractor on tour in order to play those guitars. It’s not that those aren’t great guitars, but they render themselves impractical and unfunctional for a person like me because of their weight. They’re prohibitive, so this is a very light guitar and the weight is redistributed so that it has a thin waist.”
She also talked about the difficulty finding a guitar that works with her body. “I was always finding when I was playing onstage and wearing various stage outfits the guitar would cut across one of the best features of the female body, which is your waist. I carry my guitar pretty high so I had to make all of these costumes based on the fact that you wouldn’t be able to see if I had a waist or not,” she said. “I wanted to make something that looked good and not just on a woman, but any person.”
Annie added, “I’m certainly glad to be a beacon for women and for anybody who likes music and my music. I’m glad that another guitar exists that is sympathetic to the female form. I’m glad that that exists and I hope that people will enjoy…that men and women will enjoy the ergonomics. But smaller people and women especially.”
The guitar comes in black or “St. Vincent Blue” — proving that not everything made for women has to be pink.
Watch Annie talk more about her guitar below.
Images via Ernie Ball
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Erika W. Smith is BUST's digital editorial director. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @erikawynn and email her at erikawsmith@bust.com.
