I am not a lawyer, much to the chagrin of my dear grandmother. However, I come before you today to make an argument that should be so plain, so obvious, and so transparent to even the most tone deaf of music appreciators that I shouldn’t even have to make it. But, for some reason, my client doesn’t get the respect she deserves. So here’s my opening statement:
Fiona Apple is the greatest popular music composer/performer of our time.
Not convinced? Don’t worry, you will be.
Apple, whose real name is Fiona Maggart (can’t imagine why label wanted her to change that), appeared in the American Consciousness back in 1996 with the release of her first album, Tidal. Apple and I were born a month apart back in 1977, so that means she was not yet eighteen years old when she wrote songs like Criminal, Shadowboxer, and Sleep to Dream.
Okay, I know you all want to see the Criminal video right now, so let’s just go ahead and get that out of the way.
[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFOzayDpWoI’]
It’s easy to get distracted by the overt sexuality of this video (and one can make the case that Apple was borderline exploited in it), but think about what she’s really saying here. Apple sings about having used the power of that same sexuality to manipulate a man for her own personal gain, but now she realizes that she actually loves him and wants to get him back using less devious methods.
So what would an angel say/the devil wants to know?
She doesn’t want to be bad anymore, but she doesn’t know how to get a man any other way. This is pretty deep stuff for a seventeen-year-old to have realized. Ignore the damned video. Listen to what she’s saying.
And yet, on Shadowboxer, she manages to see the other side of manipulation.
Once my lover, now my friend
What a cruel thing to pretend
What a cunning way to condescend
[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnXjISlKLuE’]
Apple showed very early on that she’s capable of writing a compelling lyric that speaks words to the emotional torment that so many young women of her generation face but that they, themselves, barely understand. As a result, while Criminal may have brought her popular acclaim, it’s Shadowboxer and Sleep to Dream that created an underground legion of Apple devotees.
Even though Tidal is her greatest commercial success, and the lyrics are undeniably powerful, the harmonies are fairly simple on all of the hit tracks. She began to explore with the 6/8 feel on Shadowboxer, but it wasn’t until her next release that she made it a part of who she is. But for a first release from a teenager, it was brilliant. Tidal won several awards for Apple, including a Grammy and an MTV Music Video Award (which led to the famous “The World is Bullshit” speech).
Apple waited three years for her next record, When the Pawn…(a shortened version of the 400 word title), which was produced by the brilliant Jon Brion. Those who expected a Criminal 2.0 were sorely disappointed. Fiona grew up quite a bit in those years, having been forced into the public eye, and the subject matter of the songs reflected that.
Fast As You Can, which was the first single from When the Pawn… explores some of the same thematic material as Criminal, and it’s harmonically simple to the point of repetition, but it brings back the compound meter feel of Shadowboxer over the bridge. The video, as directed by her then-beau Paul Thomas Anderson, is a huge shift from Criminal. Apple is a woman, now, not a girl. Fast As You Can is okay, but it’s the least musically adventurous track on the album.
[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbxqtbqyoRk’]
My personal favorite is To Your Love, a song that effortless dances through several tonal centers while Apple, herself, explores her emotional walls that separate her from those who would try to love her.
Please forgive me for my distance
but Pain has ever haunted my existence
Please forgive me for my distance
but Shame is manifest in my resistance
To Your Love
[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJqe0cULj6U’]
Watch that video and tell me another modern day performer who’s that good live. Go on—I’ll wait. No backing vocals required to cover up the tone of her voice. No Autotune needed. She’s a musician’s musician.
However, most Appleites would tell you that the best track on When the Pawn… is Paper Bag. I won’t fight them too hard on that one. It’s a nice change for Apple—it actually spends the whole tune in a major key, for once. The message of the song, however, is decidedly minor, especially from a woman who suffered from various eating disorders for much of her young life.
Hunger hurts
But starving works
When it costs too much to love
This video, again directed by Anderson, shows Apple at her best—both serious and lighthearted, both introspective and carefree. I remember when I first saw it back in 2000 or so and thought, “They made Fiona DANCE??” But it works.
[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK30r_SIZ-g’]
Unfortunately, that smirk she gives us at the end, signifying her happiness at moving on from that point in her life, perhaps, was the last we saw of Apple for nearly seven long years. Depending on whose story you believe, Apple’s next album, Extraordinary Machine, again produced by Brion, was either rejected by Sony for not being radio-friendly enough, or by Apple for being a “Jon Brion album, not a Fiona apple album. A grassroots campaign was started to ask Sony to release the record, and eventually all of the tracks were leaked to the public through various channels.
I have that original version that was produced by Brion, and while it’s brilliant in its own way, Sony was right to have rejected it for commercial purposes. Mike Elizondo, who played bass on When the Pawn… and produced several albums for Eminem and Dr. Dre, was brought in to re-record the record. The resulting record, which was released in 2005, is very, very good. But when you combine the two versions of the record, I believe it is the best recording of the young 21st century.
Here’s a little compare and contrast: First up, we’ll listen to Brion’s version of one of my favorite tracks on the record, Better Version of Me:
[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAAdToKfjLg’]
Now, here’s Elizondo’s version of the same tune:
[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAVsiW4nyjo’]
I find beauty in both. It’s also a very good example of just how important a producer can be to a recording session. You can hear Apple’s vision for the song come through in both versions, but Elizondo was clearly more focused on getting radio play. Brion had lush arrangements that used little to no drumset, focusing more on orchestral percussion, but I believe that Abe Laboriel’s excellent work on the drums in Elizondo’s take adds something compelling to the song.
As can be said of every single Apple record, Extraordinary Machine has a couple of songs in compound meter, and the glorious Waltz (Better Than Fine) is my favorite. I’ve included a live example with Nickel Creek here, just so Jack can stop complaining that I’ve dedicated a couple thousand words to Fiona Apple on his website. Ignore the cell phone quality of the audio and video, and listen to Apple’s normally plaintive voice giving inspiration to those who need it.
[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrfnDkcunBU’]
Of course, we have come to realize that Apple only writes when she wants to, and as a result, we had to wait another nearly seven years for her next recording, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do, which was released in 2012. As tends to happen with these sorts of things, it has been Apple’s most widely critically acclaimed record (named Best Record of the Year by Time Magazine), and virtually nobody has bought it. Produced by her touring drummer, Charley Drayton, each song has a highly percussive element to it. Apple’s voice seemed to have evolved over the years, with more vibrato than we had previously heard from her on studio recordings.
The biggest commercial problem with The Idler Wheel… is that it doesn’t have a single song that one could call, well, a Single. It’s a masterful work, taken as a whole, but there’s nothing that you can dance to on it. To which I say, who cares? It’s a sonically stark record, with many tracks featuring nothing more than Apple’s piano and Drayton’s percussion.
Let’s listen to Jonathan, a song dedicated to her former boyfriend, writer Jonathan Ames. Listen as Apple explains that she’s come to terms with the women in his past, but that she can’t bear to talk about it any more, as her piano weaves back and worth between minor and major tonalities in a 6/8 dance, a dance that seems to personify her own dance between her conscious and subconscious thoughts. The left hand and right hand piano lines performing Bach-like counterpoints would seem somewhat innocuous taken individually, but together, they haunt us.
[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABtDxEQLURU’]
Again, Apple’s live performances transcend even the excellence of her studio work. Here she is in 2012 at the Greek Theatre, performing Werewolf. She’s able to see the beauty in a relationship that was ultimately flawed. Who among us hasn’t felt this way?
There’s nothing wrong when
A song ends
In a minor key
[yframe url=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co5o70PI-sU’]
Who knows when we’ll get more music from Fiona Apple, if ever? She’s made enough money to never work again—she probably made enough money from Criminal alone to never work again—and one almost hopes that she doesn’t have to experience the sort of pain and anguish that has displayed itself in such beautiful ways. But, at the ripe old age of thirty-seven, literally half a lifetime away from the first time we heard her name, I have a feeling that she has more stories to tell.
So if all you know of Fiona Apple is what she looked like in her underwear as a teenager, I hope that I’ve inspired you to dig deeper into who she became. Maybe she did her career backwards, in some senses, or maybe her early commercial success gave her a license to do what it was that she actually wanted to do musically.
Regardless of how you look at it, there’s no question that Apple has provided us with a body of work that is second to none among her peers. She’s outlasted the Tori Amoses, the Rachel Yamagatas, and maybe even the Feists of the world to become somewhat of an icon.
I rest my case.