Through the revolving doors of love and sound: Fiona Apple songs in conversation with themselves.
Revisiting Fiona Apple’s old works in light of her latest album.
artwork by Charlotte Littlefield.
Since the start of her career, Fiona Apple has been known to be unpredictable. From her now iconic VMA acceptance speech, to her music itself, she is never afraid to alienate. Apple’s latest album: Fetch the Bolt Cutters (FTBC) might be her most surprising album by far. In many ways, FTBC lost many defining Fiona Apple sounds, the most prominent being her switch from a piano-centric, rich production to a percussion-centric, minimalist, and often raw production. Yet, for all its novelty, FTBC doesn’t abandon Apple’s past—it reframes it. By juxtaposing moments of her past artistry with her boldest experiments yet, FTBC feels less like a departure and more like a dialogue—a conversation between the Fiona Apple we thought we knew and the one she has always been.
1. Shadowboxer & Ladies: The Pantoum
“Shadowboxer" is the debut single of Apple’s defining debut album Tidal. It is the world’s introduction to Fiona Apple. Melancholic and sultry, “Shadowboxer” loops in a repeating cycle of push and pull with an elusive, seductive man. The musical heritage of this song carries over to “Ladies”, the eighth song of FTBC. “Ladies” swings in a slow-tempo downbeat parallel to that of “Shadowboxer”, immersing us in a pantoum-like circular rhythm. However, “Ladies” immediately feel lighter. Unlike “Shadowboxer”, which enters with a heavy piano arrangement, “Ladies” starts with a few hits on the percussion, followed by Apple’s playful mantra “Ladies, ladies, ladies/ladies, ladies, ladies/ladies, ladies, ladies, ladies.” Here, Apple also doesn’t sing in the solemn slurring voice characteristic of “Shadowboxer”. Her drawls are relaxed, at times, almost conversational. The intensity and somberness are gone. If “Shadowboxer” is Fiona Apple armed for battle, “Ladies” seems more akin to banter.
This change in tone is not just sonic. Every line in “Shadowboxer” feels momentous—“You bring me to my knees,” “You let your grace enrapture me,” and “Won’t let that dirty game recapture me”—but in “Ladies”, Apple constantly reminds us not to take it seriously with her abrupt digressions: “Fruit bat/You’re cuter than a button, mutton-head maniac.” Apple is teasing at a love that once seemed so serious to her. In “Shadowboxer”, she is on the defense in this toxic cycle of love. In “Ladies”, she no longer sees an enemy. “No love is like any other love”—“so it would be a shame to make it a competition.” Her shift is also evident in the subject addressed in the song. “Shadowboxer” is sung to her lover, while "Ladies" is addressed to the “ladies” her lover has dated or will date. Love is no longer just a cycle between her and her lover, but a cycle that every woman participates in.
Apple is still in this vicious cycle of love, but now she gains detachment from retrospection, becoming at once a participator and an observer. “Ladies, ladies, ladies, ladies/when he leaves me/please be my guest,” Apple sings to the various women she “won’t get through”. They come and leave like a “revolving door.” They are doomed to repeat this cycle again and again. Apple is one of them. She is in another cycle. Yet now, it no longer brings her despair. Love is no longer a fight. She is no longer “shadowboxing” with her hypothetical enemy. The lighthearted “Ladies" is an ode to the acceptance of this cycle. Repeat, repeat, repeat, and in this repetition comes significance. Things hit different. You start to understand. This is the meaning of a pantoum.
2. Hot Knife & For Her: The A Cappella
“Hot Knife”, Apple’s closing track on The Idler Wheel… is the song that bears the most sonic resemblance to FTBC. On “Hot Knife”, we can hear the emphasis on percussion and vocals that governs the musical composition of FTBC. On FTBC, the song that is the musical descendant of “Hot Knife” is "For Her”.
Thematically, however, the two songs are entirely opposite. “Hot Knife” deals with the ambiguity of attraction where “he’s the butter I’m the hot knife,” while “For Her” is a powerful, sardonic critique of the overwhelming figures of patriarchy. What they have in common, though, is the methods Apple employs to present these themes. A Cappella is the foundation of these two songs. Apple’s sister sang with her in “Hot Knife”, which she described as “the most intimate moment of our lives together.” For Apple, intimacy is created through harmonizing. “Hot Knife” harmonizes with her lover, but “For Her” harmonizes with the millions of abused women. The song reminds me of a scene in Margret Atwood’s Penelopiad where all the slave girls sing together, accusing Penelope of her crimes. In Apple’s “play,” the women sing together in harmony: “Like you know, you should know, but you don't know what you did” against their common abuser, joining in a web of intimacy and solidarity through their shared trauma.
3. Criminal & I Want You to Love Me: The Invitation
On first thought, this is a dubious comparison, because, unlike the first two entries, these two songs sound nothing alike. “Criminal” is Apple’s best attempt at mainstream pop artistry, whereas “I Want You to Love Me” is the opening of her most pop-defiant anthem. Yet there seems to be a thread that ties them together. Compared to the rest of the album, there is something very approachable about “I Want You to Love Me”. Perhaps it is the apparent leading piano, or the fact that the song has an obvious, pleasant melody. This is the song in FTBC that is most inviting to the general public, while the rest of the album could seem unapproachable due to its maverick sounds. Functionally, this is also the role “Criminal” plays in Apple’s debut album. It is a ploy to trick people into exploring the layers of “Tidal”—of the soul of the precocious, observant child that created the album.
“Criminal” plays into how the public perceives Apple. She presents herself as a “bad, bad girl,” who has been “careless with a delicate man.” She plays into roles and archetypes too familiar to the time, singing of “sin” and “hell.” She is the seducer, the Eve, the second sex, the criminal. However, despite their similar roles as an invitation, there is a sincerity to “I Want You to Love Me” that Apple left out in “Criminal”. Here, Apple attempts to invite not by presenting a more consumable yet false image, but by demonstrating her most vulnerable and authentic side. She wants people to come because of who she is. “I know that none of this will matter in the long run, but I know a sound is still a sound around no one,” she declares, rationalizing her desires and emotions. She is no longer the Eve in someone else’s story. This is her song. This is what she wants.
4. Sleep to Dream & Relay: The Diss Track
“Sleep to Dream" opens Apple’s debut album. It gradually became one of those iconic songs in music history that inspired many, including Kanye West, who once claimed that he aspired to be a “rap Fiona Apple.” The song demands respect with the force of brutal honesty. In FTBC, the song that carries the indignant spirit of “Sleep to Dream” is “Relay”.
Immediately, “Relay” seems to lack a certain eloquence that characterized “Sleep to Dream” and early Fiona Apple. Instead of a matrix of clever rhymes (“First you run like a fool just to be at my side/And now you run like a fool but you just run to hide/I can't abide”), “Relay” relies on repetition (“Evil is a relay sport/When the one who's burned/Turns to pass the torch.”). Apple explains that she wrote these lines when she was 15:, “It’s funny because the 15-year-old me wrote the deeper lyric, and then the 42-year-old me wrote the “Fuck you” to everybody out there acting like your lives are perfect.” There is an endearing crassness to “Relay”, probably because it says, loudly, everything that we are thinking but are afraid to say — “I resent you for presenting your life like a fucking propaganda brochure.” The Fiona Apple that is the voice of honesty, the one that sang, when she was 19, “This mind this body and this voice cannot be stifled by your deviant ways,” is still our loyal comrade against the disorienting forces of society.
5. Valentine & Fetch the Bolt Cutters: The Anthem
This is another entry that sounds completely different. “Valentine” follows the somber tone of The Idler Wheel…, while “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” has the messy freeness of FTBC. Yet, these two songs are the best representation of Apple’s evolution.
“Valentine” is a song about inertia. The most famous lyric—“I'm a tulip in a cup/I stand no chance of growing up”—presents an inability to escape from the present situation, despite her misery. In the song, Apple compares herself to “A still life drawing of a peach,” and “A fugitive too dull to flee.” She starts with a hesitant, slow piano tune, only blossoming when talking about the “you” she relies on to live through. Eventually, her screams of “you” become desperate. She needs to escape. She can’t.
“Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is a song about taking action yourself. In what seems almost like a direct answer to “Valentine”, Apple opens the song with a reflection on her reliance on others “I’ve been thinking about when I was trying to your friend/I thought it was then, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t genuine.” Apple’s song title came from a TV show. She saw bolt cutters as a “tool of liberation.” Therefore, to fetch the bolt cutters is to cut yourself free. The emotional climax of the song, unlike “Valentine”, is not about someone else, but herself. “I grew up in the shoes they told me I could fill/Shoes that were not made for running up that hill/And I need to run up that hill, I need to run up that hill/I will, I will, I will, I will, I will.” Apple goes from calling “you,” to claiming “I will” over and over again until she believes it herself. She is not a tulip in a cup. She becomes a bolt cutter.
In FTBC, Apple invites us to her most intimate contemplations. She revisits the issues that have plagued her since the start—love, pain, and defiance—but presents them through a lens sharpened by time, maturity, and a fearless disregard for convention. The album is both a culmination and a reinvention of her past, from which Apple reflects. In this way, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters" is not just Apple’s great experiment, but her statement of liberation, proving that even within the cycles of repetition she so often explores, there is always room for growth, self-discovery, and unexpected beauty.
edited by Neha Modak.
artwork by Charlotte Littlefield.