Getting Over Yourself: Fiona Apple – Shadowboxer (and the rest…)

A song for… welcomes its newest contributor, Bettina Hamilton (yay!), who debuts with the familiar experience (for me at least) of getting it so, so wrong…

It’s hard to say to exactly why the public image of Fiona Apple in the North American Autumn of 1996 was so abhorrent to me, but I do have a few theories handy.

Perhaps the stylised, dimly-lit contrived party/mess of the basements, dens, bedrooms and bathtubs of the videos of both ‘Criminal’ and ‘Sleep to Dream’ had something to do with it. The bare torsos, long legs and the Lolita get-up – the pigtails, the mismatched satin underwear, the knee-high socks- and the wounded sex-kitten-in-foetal-position act definitely ground my gears. Perhaps all the pouting, staring, lips-open-and-ready games that Apple played with the camera were just too much to take.

But most likely it was the intoxicating/excruciating mix of staged vulnerability, anorexia and an unshakable mental image I had of male, middle-aged music execs high-fiveing around the table over long lunches for their deft exploitation of a young, doe-eyed waif who could play the piano and sing like a lounge act double her age, all justified as the girl ‘could really write’ (!) (fancy that) that really let me get my hate on.

Anyway. >> to 2003/04. What happened? Don’t really know/ can’t remember, but one day someone did put on this album (Tidal) at work. The next day I put it on again myself. And so forth. I finally shut up and listened (it can take a while sometimes).

How had I so completely missed/misinterpreted the sardonic tone of ‘Criminal’? How had I never noticed that  ‘Shadowboxer’ was just a fucking great song? And ‘The First Taste’? A song so sexy that when it came on whilst jogging, I’d have to take a break. Every time.

Perhaps what was missing in Fiona Apple’s music was the fumbling awkwardness and clueless agony of adolescence and what was present were the well-articulated beginnings of the self-indulgent grey areas of adulthood. What was missing for me as a teenager- sex, love, relationships- was what Fiona Apple already knew best. Dear Fiona, Please accept my apology.