"Pay Your Way in Pain" is Annie Clark's first release as St. Vincent since her 2017 MASSEDUCTION album. In between, she'd been kept busy producing and writing for the likes of Sleater-Kinney, Taylor Swift and Sheryl Crow.
Over 1980s synthesizer tones, St. Vincent details her struggles to undertake everyday chores. "It's all the blues tropes - I went to the store, there wasn't any food, I don't have any money, my baby left me, I don't belong. I want to be loved - and everybody does," she told Apple Music. "It was really fun screaming. I hadn't screamed like that on record, maybe in real life. It was like this real massive exorcism."
Annie Clark described the song to NME as "blues for 2021," adding, "I feel like we live in a world where we're often asked to choose between surviving and dignity." "It's also about how there's nothing that I've done in my life that didn't involve some sort of struggle," she continued. "Some of those struggles are really worthy ones to have and something great can come of them."
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