“Days like this, I don’t know what to do with myself. All day and all night. I wander the halls along the walls and under my breath, I say to myself I need fuel to take flight.”
“Sullen Girl” by Fiona Apple encapsulates the feelings of emptiness and fighting for more. She makes us look into ourselves and question our motives. She describes the effect of names people call us, like a sullen girl, when we are simply so tired.
I have memories of my mother listening to Fiona Apple’s album Tidal when I was younger. I never really understood why anyone would listen to such sad moody music. I later discovered why during high school. Tidal became my favorite album and I soon found myself surrounded by angsty feminist indie music.
Sure, tastes change and people grow, but I found that this genre and artists like Fiona Apple became prominent in not only my life but also in many other women’s lives.
It can be a safe haven to find someone who has such deep empathy for you. That is what this genre felt like. To have your niche experiences elaborately met through lyrical poetry with strong piano accompaniment felt like therapy. Listening to this music made me feel validated in my emotions just as it had for millions of other women. I discovered a community where many other women used Fiona’s music as an outlet. When I met someone else who listened to Fiona Apple, we found an immediate common ground full of delicate, yet frustrated feelings.
Fiona’s appeal comes from more than just her songs. For me, I admire how much she seems not to care what anyone thinks of her music. She creates a mindset through her music; one that promises to be vulnerable and unapologetic. This mindset was there for me and many other women while navigating many societal challenges.
Women are often critiqued when emotional. They feel as if they need to hide their emotions in order to be seen as strong. Rather than feeling human emotions like anger and frustration, they are portrayed as difficult, complicated, and crazy. Still today, women are objectified, expected to act a certain way, and looked down upon.
“I told you I didn’t want to go to this dinner. You know I don’t go for those ones you bother about. So when they say something that makes me start to simmer, that fancy wine won’t put this fire out. Kick me under the table all you want. I won’t shut up.”
“Under the Table,” from Fiona’s album Fetch The Bolt Cutters, describes the regretless feeling of saying what you want when you want. She takes the prominent stance of speaking her mind even when people may not want her to. Throughout the song, she describes how she disagrees and pleads not to be spoken over or silenced.
Women find so much depth and emotion in Apple’s music because she sings about their experiences within her own. Many women find themselves listening to Apple’s music and discovering monumental lyrical words that they could never find for themselves.
Fiona Apple is an artist who creates beautifully intricate music, but more importantly, she advocates for women. She puts the complex emotions and feelings of women’s experiences into uniquely odd pieces of music. The melodic components of powerful piano accompaniment with the clashing of percussion depict the sound of a conflicting, emotional mind.
“Come on, put a little love here in my void. He said it’s all in your head and I said so’s everything, but he didn’t get it. I thought he was a man but he was just a little boy.”
“Paper Bag,” One of Fiona Apple’s most popular songs from When The Pawn… describes the scope of disappointment through heartbreak. She uses the comparison of seeing a paper bag and thinking it was a bird to loving a man, only to later discover how immature he is. Many of Apple’s songs cover heartbreak through a frustrated lens rather than a broken one. This song became widely popular on social media, especially on TikTok. More and more people found Fiona’s music validating through her raw emotional singing.
Fiona Apple’s music impacted my life, but this wasn’t an emotion or experience that only I felt. Rather, I found the community of unapologetic, loud women, who felt their true emotions no matter the constraints society put on them.
