Fiona Apple has created a soundtrack of music to listen to when you feel the end of the world is near. Music for people who feel amiss, out of their skin, and just downright isolated. I, being one of those people, feel connected to Apple in that way. Right now, I’m banging my keyboard to the beat of one of the hits off her latest album Fetch the Bolt Cutters which came out during the pandemic in 2020. The album as a whole has what seems to be its own self-named emotion – like those words that are used to describe a certain moment in time, However, I can not seem to put one word to this album. Each song has its own aura yet it all leads to the same feeling: the grief of a time you could’ve had. The album feels like the word kenopsia. Like you’re in a building that was once bustling with people, now abandoned and eerily quiet.
The first song on the album is I Want You To Love Me. The song has taken TikTok by storm. Recruiting people to their Fiona Apple era: overly sensitive, yet knowing things need to be done, and they will be done… just messily. This song makes me go feral. In an interview with Vulture, Apple states that this song was for the feeling of longing for someone you’ve never met. She goes on to explain that she wrote this in a time of constant meditation in her life, the whole thing about “if a tree falls in the forest does it even make a sound?” Apple proves that it does; it makes a vibration… this mindset of “I exist whether or not you see me.” This song to me is described by the word, Waldosia. The feeling of when you are constantly searching for someone in a crowd who has no reason to be where you are. That feeling of hope festering in your stomach when you think you see them and then you don’t. I first heard this song at a time when this was happening to me. I was moving into college for my second year. People were everywhere and all I had hoped for was to see him in the parking lot with suitcases and boxes ready to move in, too. This man was not going to college, nor was he even in the state…but my brain was so conditioned to this way of thinking. When I heard this song, it was more of a longing for someone I had known too much of rather than for someone I didn’t know at all.
Let’s talk about track nine: Heavy Balloon… which, in my opinion, is the best song on the album, with its continuous rasp from Apple and ever roaring percussion. This track is the poster child of the feeling of isolation. In that same interview with Vulture, Fiona Apple talks about a partner of her father and his battle with depression. She owns all the imagery of this song to a children’s gardening book, the play on strawberries, peas, and beans. Apple confesses that she thought the fact that strawberries spread out when they grow was cute. With spreading out comes power. As someone who battles with depression, this song to me seems like just a different way to describe it. There are so many sayings out there about what depression feels like, and how you will continue to fight it. For this one, I use Altschmerz – The feelings of weariness with the same old problems you’ve always had. It’s extremely meta because this word is just another way to describe depression. This song is just a shiny new shovel you will use to dig up old feelings and learn how to fight them all over again. Although I feel immense power from this track, like the light at the end of the tunnel is closer than I think, I still maintain this silent understanding that I am running from something, and I always will. I will be in an impossible race with something with no legs and no reason to let up. This is validated by the lyrics, “I spread like strawberries, I climb like peas and beans. I’ve been sucking it in so long that I’m busting at the seams.”
The last song I want to talk about on the album is Shameika. Apple confesses that she thought she made up this girl named Shameika, but an article written in the New Yorker and an email from Fiona Apple’s third-grade teacher confirms that she was real. The song follows the experience of eleven-year-old Fiona, going through the motions of a school day, a lunch table with shallow girls, and a girl named Shameika questioning Fiona’s intentions with a subtle “you have potential.” Just out of pure curiosity, I broke down the name Shameika. I thought it was interesting that the word shame was in the name. We all know what shame means. In that same interview, the shallow girls I mentioned laughed at Apple when she sat down at the table. Absorbing this, Fiona moved a seat over from them, excluding herself yet still yearning to be involved. This can be seen as shameful. I then looked at the half-word ika. It loosely means gentle, or “I know all.” In the song, a lyric says “Shameika wasn’t gentle and she wasn’t my friend… but she got through to me and she said… Shameika said I have potential.” and I guess she was right… Fiona Apple is a household name.
This track to me is the word, opia. Opia is the feeling you get when you’re looking someone in the eye, which can feel intrusive but vulnerable. In the song, the lyric is “she got through to me and I’ll never see her again.” I can’t explain it further but music and its feelings are subjective. To me, telling someone they have potential seems intrusive, yet a very beautifully vulnerable thing.
In all, this album is filled with meaning and feelings only weird words from the internet can explain. The record – experimental, angry, and giving the feeling of struggling for air after being in the water for too long. I won’t say this album meant more to me than it actually did, however, growing up on Fiona Apple gave me a thicker skin. Her words will always mean something to me whether it’s a deep meaning or I just like the way they sound together with her raspy voice. This album taught me that you can stand up for yourself. It taught me that being in your Fiona Apple era is not a bad thing, it just means you are in tune with yourself… and that is never a bad thing.
Featured image credited to Simon Noh via Unsplash.
