Cruel

"Cruel" is the second track on Strange Mercy, 3:34, written by Clark and recorded at Elmwood Studio in Dallas with Congleton, the second single on August 21, 2011. Its video was released on August 24 or 25, 2011, written and directed by her friend Alan Del Rio Ortiz, filmed around San Francisco and Mare Island: she is kidnapped by a motherless family, forced into a wifely role and buried alive. She told The A.V. Club that it's not that it's my family, it's that I'm kidnapped by a bereaved, motherless family, who enlist her to do all these traditionally motherly tasks that I fail at before they bury me. Paste ranked it 13th on its best songs of 2011, and a Wikipedia quotation from it says it is difficult to be upset when this song gets stuck in your head.

She played it on the Late Show with David Letterman on August 30, 2011, on Gossip Girl on February 13, 2012 and on Later... with Jools Holland on May 1, 2012. Setlist.fm counts 351 performances, her fourth most played song after "Cheerleader", "Marrow" and "Digital Witness". At Boston Calling in 2018 she played it stripped down, with the bassist Toko Yasuda, slow and syrupy and impressive in its precision, in the words of WTBU's Miranda Suarez. We hold two uploads, titled St. Vincent - Cruel and St. Vincent - Cruel (Official Video), and it should not be confused with "Cruel Summer". No covers or samples were found.