Throwback Thursday: Fiona Apple’s Revolutionary “When The Pawn…”
Fiona Apple is an extraordinary example of a once in a lifetime kind of artist. Apple does not make music to please anyone but herself and does not beg to be understood; her songs are a declaration of acceptance of her big feelings and often her lack of control of those feelings. Of her masterful 5 albums, When The Pawn… was her second, released in 1999. Fiona Apple is known for her sad, sassy, and honest songwriting. It has been reaching people’s hearts across the past decades, and its impact has not lessened.
When The Pawn… begins in a frenzy of deep piano. “On The Bound” is the first track on the album, a profession of Apple’s desire to be with the song’s subject. Ignoring any reasonings one way or another, Apple is not able to make decisions for herself, and instead settles on an unquenchable thirst for someone else. The deep piano shifts to violins, synth and a hint of horns. This song is an orchestral overture to the rest of the album, introducing the vibe, the instruments, and the anger that will carry through each song.
In the next song, “To Your Love”, Apple emits a sort of darker Amy Winehouse (pre-Amy) vibe. The consistent key changes in the song keep it moving as one fluid body, with its driving force being the drums behind it. Apple begins talking of her own issues with love and being able to accept it. She has the passion for the love, but her shame, pain, and struggles stop her from being able to fully accept the love she’s asking for. Apple is not an easy-to-understand person, yet she’s able to perfectly articulate her nuanced struggles through her songs, which is what makes her such a unique and relatable artist. Apple refers to her back-and-forth in her feelings as a dance. By the time the dance is done in her own head, she’s too tired to give a relationship her all: “So now you have it, so tell me baby, what’s the word?/ Am I your gal or should I get out of town?” The pressure is now pushed onto her potential partner, and she is not willing to build a relationship from the ground up, she wants all or nothing. The song sounds almost villainous, which I imagine Apple meant to symbolize the way her lovers view her when she dances her “rigadoon” around them.
“Limp” begins softly then picks up with an almost danceable beat. Apple describes a person who gets off on making other people feel bad, and then ‘saving’ them. “You fondle my trigger, then you blame my gun”. This song is, although serious and sad, extremely catchy. The chorus is pop-rocky, with a bass-heavy bridge in the middle of the song, with fun synth effects and dynamic drums throughout. The song almost seems to celebrate this person’s demise early, as Apple is sure of its coming.
In the next song, Apple talks about love as if it’s a disease to be cured. “Love Ridden” discusses over a calm piano the transition from lovers to friends as healing. A violin enters in the second chorus, which builds in layers into the bridge where Apple says: “My hand won’t hold you down no more/ The path is clear to follow through/ I stood too long in the way of the door/ And now I’m giving up on you”. This song speaks on the overwhelming nature of love that’s so often overlooked in music. Sometimes you have to refuse love in order to preserve yourself, and the other person.
“Paper Bag” is a song about expectations, and romanticizing someone into a person they’re not saying “I thought it was a bird but it was just a paper bag”. Apple’s vocals have hints of jazz with her unorthodox note jumps in the verses. Apple desperately wants this person, even saying she has a hunger toward him, but that she knows she’s “a mess he don’t wanna clean up”. Toward the second verse, the song intensifies as Apple gets fed up with not being easy enough to handle for the people she loves—with not being understood. “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”. After the second chorus, she repeats herself again this time jumping through a myriad of notes and runs as she spirals with the idea that her own struggles not only affect her, but those she loves.
In a more experimental turn, Apple plays with alien-like sounds and intermittent loud, deep guitar riffs in “A Mistake”. This song has multiple key changes, embracing the energy of “To Your Love” from earlier on the album. Both sonically and lyrically, this song is focused on not always doing what is expected of you. Apple wants to make a mistake to piss off the people who have given her ‘advice’ that goes against what she wants to do. She is sick of doing what she ‘should’, and wants to embrace the mistakes that make her love her music even more. The special charm of Fiona Apple is admitting her imperfections in her lyrics while embracing imperfections in her voice. Her entire discography is an ode to honesty, so fixing her mistakes seems counterintuitive. The song has a myriad of instrumental touches in the background.
Upping the tempo at the start, Apple aptly sings “Fast As You Can”. The jazz influences once again are strong on this one. This song is a warning to her lover: don’t underestimate her. Apple admits her draw to drama, and her hunger for the fights. The song begins with a swung feel to the instrumental, then snaps into standard feel at the chorus. This feels almost like an intimidation tactic by the artist since it’s her pivotal message: “Fast as you can/ Scratch me out, free yourself /Fast as you can”. During the bridge of the song, it slows down. This is where she talks about the (few) times where her mind lets her have that bit of content. The slowing mirrors the calm that she has in those moments, before the song (and her feelings) pick up the pace again. The song ends with about a minute of instrumental symbolizing her mind running about as fast as it can, ending haphazardly without a clear cut off.
Stuck in her cycle of big, big feelings, in “The Way Things Are”, Apple asserts her audience that she deserves her lack of love, and that she wouldn’t know what to do with anything good. In this song, Apple really belts her words for the first time in the chorus of the song: “How could I fight?/ When we’re on the same side?”. The sad truth about being stuck in a negative cycle is that you don’t realize that something better can even exist. She tells her lover to “keep on calling me names/…And I’ll keep kicking the crap ‘til it’s gone”. There’s a slide effect on the guitar in the verses that feels like an alarm, alerting anyone she gets close to to keep their distance, and don’t try to fix her.
“Get Gone” tells the story of Apple rejecting sex from a man who refuses to give up. For whatever reason this may be (it seems to me because he’s in a position of power in the music industry). This is the sad story that many women go through, where their worth to a man relies on whether or not they’ll agree to have sex with him. “It’s time the truth was out that he don’t give a shit about me”. Through the songs careful use of drums, changing tempo, and intensity, Apple seems to swing her mood from being upset, to angry, to accepting of his relentlessness, to fury of a system that allows her to be treated like a tool to be used. She begs him to “Get Gone” in this song. To leave her life and allow her to feel validated in her decisions.
The last track, “I Know” is a beautiful piano ballad, and details Fiona’s falling in love with a man in a relationship. Although the relationship emerges from something bad, it doesn’t have to reflect the past mistakes of both people, and it can grow into something good. Fiona is this person’s “crowbar”—meaning she opened up new doors for him and herself. Apple is content in knowing she has to hide in the background until the man is ready to leave his relationship. She writes “You can use my skin/ to bury secrets in/ and I will settle you down”. Eventually, Apple says “I can’t help you out/ while she is still around”, and then says that her patience will eventually run out. But in the depths of her mind, she knows. She knows what they have, and so does he. I think the beautiful thing about this song is that Apple knows she does not deserve her lover any more than his past suitor, but she knows that she loves him and therefore truly believes she’d be a better fit for him. This song comes out of a deep place of vulnerability, and to admit feelings for someone in a relationship is such a taboo. Apple isn’t scared of admitting what she’s been through, and talking about real life as it is: imperfect, and sometimes selfish.
When The Pawn…is drawn from a larger poem, which is the album’s true title: “When the pawn hits the conflicts he thinks like a king/ What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight/ And he’ll win the whole thing ‘fore he enters the ring/ There’s nobody to batter when your mind is your might/ So when you go solo you hold your own hand/ And remember that depth is the greatest of heights/ And if you know where you stand then you know where to land/ And if you fall it won’t matter ‘cause you’ll know that you’re right”. This album has a ton to dissect and appreciate, and each listen brings me closer to the songs.