Last night, just as I was about to hop into the shower, a funny thing happened and it involved Fiona Apple. My boyfriend Tyler is an avid connoisseur of fine music. He diligently and regularly pillages the Internet finding the best new thing and I am thus exposed. Before I met him, I was similarly gifted in the cool hunt. When you’re single you can do things like stay up until 3 AM discovering the latest band so that you can be the asshole who schools your friends like so:
Friend: Kings of Leon are so cool!
Me: God, they were so much better before. That last album…I played it until my ears bled BACK IN TWO-THOUSAND-AND-FOUR.
That type of thing. But now that my boyfriend has commandeered the radio, literally and figuratively, I just sit back and let him do his thing.
That’s why I was surprised when, as I began to wait five minutes for the water to warm up, Fiona Apple came on the stereo. Generally, because Tyler is on the constant prowl for the new and undiscovered, taking the time to listen to old standbys is considered a waste of time. The longer you listen to your favorite Snoop Dog album from the 90s, the more of a leg up your compatriots in hip have on you. There is little time for nostalgia in his competitive universe.
You see, Fiona Apple is one of my favorite artists of all time. Her debut album Tidal was released in 1996. I was young enough when she came out not to understand commercialism or “pop” music and thereby cannot even decipher to this day if she qualified as such. The music I heard back then was the music being played on popular radio stations. There were the “pop” popular music stations, the “rock” popular music stations, and the “alternative” popular music stations.
When you break it down, if it’s not on NPR, it’s pop music no matter how you slice it. The music on any and all of these stations must be commercially viable because of…commercials. Swiffer’s not going to shell out a bunch of dough if some DJ is spinning stuff they’re not absolutely, positively sure that the majority of brainless sheeple will tap their toes to. The result is by and large a lot of crap. Crap is safe.
Had Fiona come out while I was in my 20s, perhaps I would have disregarded her altogether or judged her not on her sound but solely for being showcased on MTV or 98.7 FM, the local radio station geared towards mid-lifers. It’s hard for me to judge that sort of thing because I am so attached to her music today largely because of nostalgia and my particular taste at that time.
There was something special about Fiona. She was so angry, so translucent in complexion, so utterly and unforgivably anorexic. I can’t even imagine record executives today producing music by a woman that unhealthy looking. But that was what was so amazing about her: her body like a ten year old boy and hips that jutted out furiously above the top of whatever low slung pant she was wearing. That combined with her lyrics of insanity and rapture was enough to make me swoon. I was young and socially impotent but I imagined if I were old enough, I would be like Fiona Apple. Black eyeliner, unkempt hair, sack of bones. She was representative of everything I felt like at the age of twelve but had no personal experience for which to explain those feelings.
I wonder who girls these days look up to. Blood smearing, feather wearing, performance “artist” Lady Gaga? The plastic surgery troupe otherwise known as High School Musical? The nearest equivalent to a modern day Fiona would be Cat Power, but she has nowhere near the commercial power that Miss Apple once commanded. Perhaps I sound like a 75-year-old man when I say this but didn’t the industry seem vastly more legitimate, organic, altruistic, and downright musical even ten years ago?
When I veer dangerously into nostalgic old man territory, I try to remind myself that every generation thinks that their time was the real time. Beatlemaniacs might think Fiona Apple was a joke. Someone who’s been to a Jimi Hendrix show will most likely call Wolfmother a bogus act by comparison. And so on and so forth. I’m just curious as to who is setting an example for our young almost-women today. My writhing, emaciated, soulful Fiona served me well in my youth. As “Shadow Boxer” seeps down the hallway and into my black and white bathroom, I realize that music could have never evolved past that time in my life and I would have completely and utterly content.
This must be what getting old is like.
side topic: do (smart) girls typically have female favorites? that is, favorite musical artist, favorite author, favorite athlete, that type of thing. discuss.
While I try to be supportive of fellow women of the arts, that doesn’t always mean I rank female artists at the top of my lists. Just because I love Mary Shelley doesn’t mean I rank her above Cormac McCarthy on my list of all time favorite writers.