One of the most interesting and appealing aspects of Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters is its focus on female empowerment.
Whether she’s recounting a dinner party where an ex objected to her outspokenness on ‘Under the Table’ (“Kick me under the table all you want, I won’t shut up”) or finding common ground with another ex’s new girlfriend on ‘Newspaper’ (“I wonder what lies he’s telling you about me to make sure that we’ll never be friends”), these songs are explicitly for and about women.
Of all the new music that has dropped in the coronavirus era, I’m most excited and entranced by Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters, the singer-songwriter’s first new album since 2012’s The Idler Wheel.
The notoriously reclusive, reluctant genius has released only five albums in 25 years, each of them a very different kind of masterpiece. A new Fiona Apple record is enough of an event that I’m dedicating the rest of the week to this unique gem.
Jennifer Lopez’s introduction in Hustlers was one of the great moments in cinema last year, musical or otherwise. And I promise I say that as a movie fan, not a guy who enjoys watching Lopez work the pole.
By framing this moment through the eyes of Constance Wu’s character, writer/director Lorene Scafaria makes Lopez’s dance not about her sexuality but her power. She is not a sex object… she’s the subject, specifically subjecting her will on the helpless men in the audience. She commands the stage, separating men from their money just as she will later in the movie through more nefarious methods. It’s appropriate that her song of choice is titled ‘Criminal.’
I’ve noted that several artists on this list have had a lean decade, production-wise. Fiona Apple takes first prize in that regard, releasing only one album over the last ten years, 2012’s The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do.
Most people just call it The Idler Wheel.
Before the well-timed Josh Rouse concert, I had another plan for my 4,000th Song of the Day.
I’ve always said that I don’t have a favorite song, but there is one song I know for certain has to be on any list of my five or ten favorite songs, and that is Fiona Apple’s ‘I Know.’ This heartbreaking ballad is the final track on Apple’s 1999 album When the Pawn… and it’s a stunner.
Meet Me In Montauk 