Tag Archives: When the Pawn

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Song of the Day #230: ‘The Way Things Are’ – Fiona Apple

fiona1Choosing another song from When the Pawn… is both a simple and an impossible task. There are no bad choices, but how do you narrow it down to one? Today’s track, ‘The Way Things Are,’ is the first of a trio of songs that finish off the album (the closing track, ‘I Know,’ has already been featured as a Song of the Day — though the YouTube gods have since removed the video from rotation).

One thing that’s increasingly clear after listening to a lot of Apple’s music is that she must be one hell of a difficult girlfriend. So many of her songs pause in the midst of trashing some hapless man to point the finger back at herself. She even has a song called ‘Fast As You Can’ which advises a potential beau to get the hell away from her for his own good.

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Song of the Day #229: ‘Paper Bag’ – Fiona Apple

whenthepawnI was a pretty big fan of Apple’s based on Tidal alone but when her second album came out the whole game changed.

When the Pawn…, as it is popularly known (the full title is a 90-word poem), is quite simply one of the greatest albums I’ve ever heard. And experiencing it for the first time was an unexpected pleasure. When I buy a new album, particularly the sophomore release of a young artist, I’m hoping to like it, maybe even love it — I’m never expecting a masterpiece. But that’s exactly what I got.

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Song of the Day #13: ‘I Know’ – Fiona Apple

Just about every one of my songs of the day so far have been about something other than the song. Sure, I like all of those songs, but I picked them as a way to talk about other issues.

This one, though, is all about the song.

If I were forced at gunpoint to rescue only ten songs from my collection and have the rest go up in flames, I would pull my hair out trying to decide on nine of them. But without a doubt one of the ten would be Fiona Apple’s ‘I Know.’

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