Leading up to the release of Fetch the Bolt Cutters, I'm going to do a thread about all of Fiona Apple's albums because she is a full-on genius:

1. Tidal

1a Sleep to Dream: RIP, Bill Withers, because you can hear some of his phrasing in the riff she sings at the end of this. What a song, what an auspicious beginning of a career. Also, it occurs to me that this is not necessarily between two people but a conversation with yourself.

1b Sullen Girl: There is no other song like this. It is written as if she is under water. It is the rare piece of singing that highlights the low parts of her voice as much as it does the high (the extended "my pearl").

1c Shadowboxer: A perfect song. As is always the case with her, the lyrics are airtight yet evocative. I remember coming home from high school and dropping my backpack on the ground because I turned the TV on and this video came on. I had rarely heard anything so beautiful.

1d Criminal: She wrote this quickly, but this is instructive for any writer: The mechanics will shine if you trust your instincts and do the damn thing. It showcases her irony and wit. Who else could write a song that tousled your heart in high school yet score a J.Lo dance?

1e Slow Like Honey: I sing this song in every show I do. How on Earth did a teenager write this? (Because she is a genius.) Every major recording artist should do this song; it should be a standard. I want to live in this song. Here's my rendition:

1f The First Taste: I think all of us who love her will remember exactly how we felt when she worked "Daddy Long Legs" into a lyric. That feeling of "Wait -- that's not right; I'm not right; that's OK; I'm OK." And also, the lust. What an interpretation of lust.

1g Never Is a Promise: There are some songs that affirm a melody that has run through your life yet you can't quite situate. This is one of those. Also, the writing. The writing. The writing. Who begins a song with "You'll never see the courage I know"? Fiona: that's who.

1h The Child Is Gone: This song contains the lyric "Honey, help me out of this mess / I'm a stranger to myself." Excuse me? How did you just include all of romantic life into one line?

1i Pale September: This is god level for me. The poetry is Pulitzer-worthy. Again: A teenager wrote this. The coda to this song is one of the most stunning things you will ever hear in your life.

1j Carrion: I mean, where to begin. The sly tenderness of the singing, the ferociousness of the songwriting. She knew what she was doing: I will drop you into my world and you will never be the same. You're falling because I made you fall.

Tomorrow: When the Pawn, an album that deserved the grandeur of its full title.

2. When the Pawn...

2a On the Bound: Fittingly for its title, the melody and instrumentation loop around, reiterating the cycle of anger and frustration and doubt at the core of the song. This song is noir; it sounds like something out of a Hitchcock or spy movie. (Imagine a Fiona Bond theme, btw.)

2b To Your Love: The bridge of all bridges. The onomatopoeia and assonance and sheer, well, derring-doo of it. Also, the transition from the previous song catapults you into this one. It seems a very knowing contrast to the sly build-up that happens later on Track 7.

2c Limp: Fiona SAID "'Longview' but better." The drums by Matt Chamberlain are unreal (and are a fascinating comparison/contrast with the work Charlie Drayton would do with her on The Idler Wheel). This is such a brutal TKO; there's no coming back from this.

2d Love Ridden: I assume a double entendre in the title. Again, we see the structure of the song reiterating its message; you can hear the love slipping away. Maybe unintentionally, when she sings "Now I'm giving up on," it kind of sounds as if she's saying "Now I'm Fiona Apple."

2e Paper Bag: A masterpiece. The songwriting is devastating. The "It's all in your head" lyric is perhaps the id of her body of work. The repetition and the subtle differences in phrasing in the latter part of the song are truly inspired. We are hearing her feel the world.

2f A Mistake: A similar theme to "Criminal," but she extends it into irony, and you can hear the Cheshire Cat grin of it. Her singing is especially deft in this. Incidentally, I think Halsey could do a fantastic cover of this song.

2g Fast As You Can: Perhaps more than any other song, this one asserts a cardinal rule: The rhythm and pacing will befit the emotional narrative. This is also noir; this is also a thriller. The outro seems like the score to a lover's running away.

2h The Way Things Are: As I noted recently, this song has a remarkable structure that is very hard to pull off: Verse-Refrain-Verse-Refrain-Chorus-Bridge-Chorus-Chorus. "How could I fight beside you?" is a cataclysmic question to ask, borne of such despair yet love at once.

2i Get Gone: A perfect exemplar of "When I'm mad, you'll know it." The hard alliteration of the title serves a purpose. Also, the pivot from second person to the third person "he"; she's turned away from him, as done with him as he is gone.

2j I Know: A song so timeless it could have been in every version of A Star Is Born. And, of course, the last line is omitted, with the implication that it is in the present tense of the title instead of the future tense of the refrain. She's known all along. She's grown wiser.

On our next episode: Extraordinary Machine

That next episode will be tomorrow (Fri), btw

3. Extraordinary Machine

3a Extraordinary Machine: How would artists interpret Steve Jobs' (ahem) Apple-ification of the world? Fiona uses a Tin Pan Alley-type song to show that people who emote greatly can adopt technological control of themselves. What makes them extraordinary is deep self-knowledge.

3b Get Him Back: More double entendres masterfully handled. Tempo evokes the push-pull of a chase and an escape. There is an age-old folk quality to the song in its verses' collective catalogue of ex-lovers. The ending is wickedly gleeful. This album burnishes her upper register.

3c O' Sailor: Though I loved the long melodic lines of the Jon Brion version, I think this production elevates the song's structure. One of my favorite bridges of hers. The chorus could very well be posed to herself; questions to yourself can be the saddest of the unanswered.

3d Better Version of Me: As with the album title/title song, a main theme here is Working on Yourself. "The rhyme is losing to the riddling"! "Folderol" is archaic but accurate, and seems like a companion piece to her "derring-do." The better version has not yet come; will it?

3e Tymps: It's a series of good things followed by their deterioration (the red now rust, the signature thing now harrowing), so when the chorus ends, the memory of love that could be a saving grace may well just be the lesser of two evils. A brilliantly devastating counterpoint.

3f Parting Gift: An all-time great opening verse to a song. That this is just piano/vocal is exactly right. You can feel her almost resisting yet loving the piano (sound familiar?). Can you imagine if this were the 11 o'clock number in a musical? She'd win a Tony for that alone.

3g Window: The 20th anniversary edition of this album should come with a window you can actually break. (Or maybe a sailor you can also kiss??) I've rage-cried to this song approximately five million times in my life.

3h Oh Well: "What wasted unconditional love on somebody who doesn't believe in the stuff" just bodied the American songbook, all our romantic pasts, and Jason in his Golden Fleece. Notice how she tempers her singing so that it echoes "Window" but is shot through with exhaustion.

3i Please Please Please: By her own admission, she thinks this is not her strongest song, but if THIS is your "not strong" song? It's a meta-commentary on the fickleness of the music industry; its placement on the album makes exactly the point about writing she wants it to make.

3j Red Red Red: Though I adored the Grand Guignol of Jon Brion, this is such an inspired rendering of the song, as if she's covering and checking herself. "What's so impressive about a diamond except the mining?" is one of my favorite lyrics; that verse is a whole universe.

3k Not About Love: Forgive me, but I do prefer the frenzied bloom of the strings on the Jon Brion version. All the same, both versions veer like boats in a storm. (There's that sailor again!!) Of course, the song is absolutely about love, or its opposite, or are they one?

3l Waltz (Better Than Fine): With all love for Queen Bey, this is the greatest song about being single ever written. It's probably saving lives right now. She is so generous to leave us with this. Prayer, meditation, whatever you call it -- the person who wrote it is a goddess.

Before I cover The Idler Wheel -- my favorite favorite favorite -- it's probably best for you to read this piece I wrote for @lithub because that album was the soundtrack to everything that happened at the time. https://lithub.com/rakesh-satyal-on-the-pick-up-line-that-changed-his-life/

4. The Idler Wheel...

4a Every Single Night: The cyclical has merged fully with the psychological; the singular brain that got us here is both reflexive and perceptive. As a counterpoint to the first track on her first album, she doesn't go to sleep to dream; in fact, she might not go to sleep at all.

4b Daredevil: The fact that a daredevil would need a "chaperone" is darkly comical; the likelier need would be a "stunt person," but she doesn't want to give up the daring just to get a bit of caring. The understandable paradox of shouting "SEEK ME OUT" is album-encompassing.

4c Valentine: My fave ever. I'm not alone in stating that such a sad song was one that saved my life. "I watch you live to have my fun" is the most succinct, knowing way to describe love-melancholy I have ever heard. This song doesn't just belong in a museum; it is the museum.

4d Jonathan: Again, irony -- telling someone "I don't want to talk about anything" (and it's technically true: she's not talking; she's singing). You can feel them moving; they're on the train of which she sings. And then we leave the relative calm of this moment and go into...

4e Left Alone: Her songbook rewards you; the songs inform one another, become all the more striking. Carrion --> Fast As You Can --> Oh Well --> Not About Love --> this. The playful frenzy of the verses leads to the rumination of the choruses. Her singing here is beyond.

4f Werewolf: A song sending up a common aim of both writing and memorializing a romance: trying to explain what it was by way of simile but realizing there’s no real fit; she could “liken you to a lot of things” cuz it wasn’t unique. No wonder it ends in a minor key. No bigs.

4g Periphery: The songs moves that memorialization of romance closer to the periphery as it progresses. That’s why it gravel-trudges in and out. The chorus begins with the idea of love then ends at not even liking the person. And then the last relieved admonishment, like a taunt.

4h Regret: I don’t know if there’s anything I can state about this song that can better encapsulate its effectiveness of rage and comfort than this memory: https://twitter.com/rakeshsatyal/status/1144694298845294592?s=21 https://twitter.com/rakeshsatyal/status/1144694298845294592

4i Anything We Want: The joy of this song, the fulfilling abandon of knowing that love in adulthood might recall the unconstrained curiosity and wonder of childhood. The fact of his infatuation paired with her sincere flirtation. A happy song, and a gift, that they both deserve.

4j Hot Knife: Once again, no one else could write this. If the album began with cyclical worry, here it climaxes in cyclical joy. Whenever I need a pick-me-up, I put this on. It’s a cri de coeur from an artist who knows the heart better than anyone.

4k Largo: I just love the generosity of this song, an homage to her most beloved live venue. This is maybe the most she embodies Joni Mitchell, but of course with a charm and tenderness all her own.

And now we wait.

OK, while we keep waiting, her best cover/one of the greatest covers ever:

5. Fetch the Bolt Cutters

5a I Want You to Love Me: It elevates many of her hallmarks: It's cinematic; it bears an incessant thought refined by the repetition of a mind used to repetition but used to using repetition to its advantage. It's an incantation that knows it will conjure what it wants to conjure

5b Shameika: A classic. You can hear the arrangement around her as if she's Mary Poppins, a splendid order under her control. A young woman sees strength in you that you may not see in yourself; it steels you for years. That's how she knew she had the potential to create this.

5c Fetch the Bolt Cutters: Only her second title song; the phrase demands to be set to music. Women are made to run up a hill that is a man's plain. (Remember the diamond of "Red Red Red"?) The Kate Bush reference -- fetch me a fainting couch with the bolt cutters cuz OHMYGOD.

5d Under the Table: A Prince-like start. Kicking someone under the table is an assault. It's unacceptable, so it will not be accepted. She is aware of how right she is, so her reply can be playful and all the more effective. This won't stay under the table; she'll see to that.

5e Relay: She wrote it at 15, but "Evil is a relay sport" is the lyric of our time. Kinetic energy is often the lifeblood of a Fiona song; it hyper-pulses here. She is not afraid of evil. She calls it out. It takes a mastermind to produce this track at home, a race around a room.

5f Rack of His: She coyly objectifies him the way a man would objectify a woman, but she has the knowledge of having been objectified, so he has no power and she has a power he could never have. Her ability is wasted on him by the end, so she can just hum. (Cf "Periphery")

5g Newspaper: The better marriage is between two women wronged by an unworthy man. He doesn't just take away the person you could have been; he takes away the people you could have known. This is possibly the wisest song she has ever written. She knows good friendship IS wisdom.

5h Ladies: The fusion of brain and heart reaches its apex. She imparts what she has learned, and it's both cerebral and cardiac, sage and sentient. "Nobody can replace anybody else" is forever help. The singing is so gentle yet empowering. I wish Aretha were alive to cover this.

5i Heavy Balloon: This is the greatest song about depression ever written, not least cuz it understands that depression often manifests as anger. It understands that depression doesn't necessarily dull your senses; it can gild them, make them more sensual. Portishead in the beat.

5j Cosmonauts: The backing vocals ascend and descend, underscoring the back-and-forth of gravity and levity in the lyrics. Then 2/3 of the way through, the song achieves liftoff, then things cascade and slacken, revive. Will gravity win, or will levity? Is winning even a thing?

5k For Her: See below. A choral song is practiced, makes the chorus practitioners with a purpose. The woman here knows the power of her knowledge, and holding him to account belongs to her just as much as that. https://twitter.com/rakeshsatyal/status/1251010134723174401?s=20

5l Drumset: What a clever conceit: Percussion can define a song's construction, so without the drumset, is there a bass line, and then a song, at all? But the song continues apace because SHE can be her OWN percussion. (She is a pianist, after all.) There is such confidence here.

5m On I Go: "Now I only move to move" is a priceless gift of what it feels like to survive being bullied. When your body feels endangered, every gesture is an earned, if heartbreaking, triumph. She is free of criticizing herself before being herself. The bolts are cut. Watch out.

Thanks for following this thread. If you enjoyed it, please consider reading this book, most of which I wrote while listening to The Idler Wheel on a constant loop. Fiona's songbook has launched a thousand works of art, and it will launch so many more. https://www.amazon.com/No-One-Can-Pronounce-Name-ebook/dp/B01LM0KZN8/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=satyal&qid=1587158477&sr=8-1