she does in fact have social media: she’s on Tumblr. fiona apple could be reblogging from you right now and you’d have no idea.
I don’t know who needs to see this right now, but fiona apple is on tumblr and she is hoping that you are having a wonderful time and that you run across exactly the thing you need to inspire you at exactly the right moment.
sullen girl - fiona apple / because dreaming costs money, my dear
o’ sailor - fiona apple / circle - mitski
parting gift - fiona apple / square - mitski
fiona apple / mitski
fiona apple on fetch the bolt cutters / mitski on be the cowboy
fiona apple - paper bag / mitski - square
oh well - fiona apple / i bet on losing dogs - mitski
fiona apple / mitski
the first taste - fiona apple / come into the water - mitski
fast as you can - fiona apple / first love/late spring - mitski
cosmonauts - fiona apple / francis forever - mitski
left alone - fiona apple / fireworks - mitski
i want you to love me - fiona apple / francis forever - mitski
“The whole reason why I wanted to make an album in the first place was because I was so tired of trying to explain my personality to people. I was so uncomfortable with the social situations that I thought-I really, really thought-that if I had a CD of songs…that I could just have that, put that out into the world. And then everyone would understand me and then I would have all the friends.”
fiona apple / mitski
love ridden - fiona apple / strawberry blonde - mitski
a mistake - fiona apple / townie - mitski
jonathan - fiona apple / texas reznikoff - mitski
anything we want - fiona apple / pink in the night - mitski
jonathan - fiona apple / strawberry blonde - mitski
every single night - fiona apple / heat lightning - mitski
the child is gone - fiona apple / bag of bones - mitski
get gone - fiona apple / there’s nothing left for you here - mitski
cosmonauts - fiona apple / i guess - mitski
fiona apple / mitski
left alone - fiona apple / stay soft - mitski
extraordinary machine - fiona apple / everyone - mitski
fiona apple / mitski - my body’s made of crushed little stars / working for the knife - mitski
anything we want - fiona apple / once more to see you - mitski
fiona apple / mitski on songwriting as a child
fiona apple / mitski on writing for an audience
periphery - fiona apple / should’ve been me - mitski
fast as you can - fiona apple / pink in the night - mitski
i want you to love me - fiona apple / that’s our lamp - mitski
percussion on jonathan - fiona apple / working for the knife - mitski
“It’s called Extraordinary Machine because that was kind of like my hopeful pet name for myself. Like give me anything, be mean to me, do whatever, life hit me with whatever, and it’ll go through me, and it’ll come out something nice.”
extraordinary machine - fiona apple / i don’t smoke - mitski
werewolf - fiona apple / geyser - mitski
fast as you can - fiona apple / everyone - mitski
pale september - fiona apple / lonesome love - mitski
window - fiona apple / humpty - mitski
left alone - fiona apple / that’s our lamp - mitski
“I’ve gotten a lot of complaints saying that I can’t play guitar, and it’s true, I’m a keyboardist. But I do this because for a lot of girls it’s kind of scary to try to start playing guitar cause you feel like you immediately won’t be good enough. So I’m telling you right now, I can’t play guitar and I’m playing guitar on stage. You can just start where you can.”
fiona apple / mitski
fiona apple / mitski
fiona apple / mitski
fetch the bolt cutters - fiona apple / mitski on beauty
fetch the bolt cutters - fiona apple / mitski on self preservation
largo - fiona apple / wife - mitski
“Most of the time when I write songs-I think that I get this reputation, because it’s true, that I write all these songs that are very angry towards people and it’s all about trying to seem like I’ve got it all under control and it’s really, it’s not true. I never feel like that when I’m writing the songs. They’re all kind of pep talks. But they end up kind of coming true later on. After like a year or two I’ll finally actually feel as strong as I did when I tried to pretend that I was that strong when I wrote the song.”
fiona apple
“I needed love songs about real relationships that are not power struggles to win or lose. Above all, I needed songs that could help me forgive both others and myself for our shortcomings. As I have always done, I wrote down what I needed to hear.”
This year, in hindsight, was a real write-off. I had grand plans for it, and while I ushered it in in a very low-key manner since I was recovering from the flu, I’d expected things to look up. Well, you know what they say about plans (RIP, my trip to Europe). I got very, very sick in early February, and I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t COVID. Since March, the days have been a carousel of monotony: coffee, run, work, cook, yoga, existential spiral, sleep. My Own Private Year of Rest and Relaxation, if you will. Of course, life has a way of breaking through regardless; I attended protests, completed my thesis, graduated from grad school, took a couple of road trips upstate, and celebrated the accomplishments and birthdays of friends and family from a safe social distance. It was all a bit of a blur, and not ideal circumstances to re-enter the real world, or whatever this COVID-present is.
Throughout it all, in lieu of happy hours, coffee dates, and panel discussions, I’ve turned even more to culture and cuisine to fill the the negative space on my calendar where my social life once resided. However, since a global pandemic ought not to disrupt every tradition, here’s my year-end round up of what made this terrible one slightly more tolerable.
TV
After an ascetic fall semester abstaining from TV in 2019 (save for my beloved Succession), I allowed myself to watch more as the year wore on, and especially after graduation. I caught up on some cultural blind spots by finally getting around to The Sopranos, Ramy, Search Party, andGirlfriends.I wasn’t alone in bingeing Sopranos, it absolutely lived up to the hype and then some; this Jersey Girl can’t get enough gabagool-adjacent content, pizzeria culture is my culture!
Speaking of my culture, there was also a disproportionate amount of UK and European shows in my queue. Nothing like being in social isolation and watching the horny Irish teens in Normal People brood. I’m partial to it because I share a surname with the showrunner, so I have to embrace blind loyalty even though there was, in my opinion, a Marianne problem in the casting. Speaking of charming Irish characters with limited emotional vocabularies, I belatedly discovered This Way Up a 2019 show from Aisling Bea and Sharon Horgan. And while Connell and Marianne are actually exceptional students, I found the real normal people on GBBO to bring me a bit more joy. Baking was abundantly therapeutic for me this year, and watching charming people drink loads of tea and fret over soggy bottoms was a comfort. I also discovered the Great Pottery Throw Down, and as a lifelong ceramics enthusiast, I cannot recommend it highly enough if you care about things like slips, coils, and glazing techniques. GPTD embraces wabi sabi in a way that GBBO eschews flaws in favor of perfection, and in a time of uncertainty, the former reminded me why I miss getting my hands in the mud as a coping mechanism (hence all the baking). Speaking of coping mechanisms, like everybody else with two eyes and an HBO password, I loved Michaela Cole’s I May Destroy You; though we’ve all had enough distress this year for a lifetime, watching Cole’s Arabella process her assault and search for meaning, justice, and closure was a compelling portrait of grief and purpose in the aftermath of trauma. Arabella’s creative and patient friends Kwame and Terry steal the show throughout, as they deal with their own setbacks and emotional turmoil. Where I May Destroy You provides catharsis, Ted Lasso presents British eccentricity in all its stereotypical glory. At first I was skeptical of the show’s hype on Twitter, but once I gave in it charmed me, if only for Roy Kent’s emotional trajectory and extolling the restorative powers of shortbread. For a more accurate depiction of life in London, Steve McQueen’s series Small Axeprovides a visually lush and politically clear-eyed depiction of the lives of British West Indians in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.Lastly, how could I get through a recap of my year in tv if I don’t mention The Crown.Normal People may have needed an intimacy coordinator, but the number of Barbours at Balmoral was the real phonographic content for me.
Turning my attention across the Channel, after the trainwreck that was Emily in Paris, I started watching a proper French show, Call My Agent! It’s truly delightful, and unlike the binge-worthy format of “ambient shows” I have been really relishing taking an hour each week to watch CMA, subtitles, cigarettes, and all.
My Spotify wrapped this year was a bit odd. I don‘t think “Chromatica II into 911″ is technically a song, so it revealed other things about my listening habits this year, which turned out to remain very much stuck in the last, sonically. I listened to a lot more podcasts than new music this year, but there were some records that found their way into heavy rotation. While I listened to a lot of classics both old and new to write my thesis (Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen, Prokofiev, and Bach) the soundtrack to my coursework, runs, walks, and editing was more contemporary. Standouts include:
Saint Cloud by Waxahatchee, which makes me feel like I’m breathing fresh air even when I’m stuck inside all day
La Bella Vita by Niia, which was there for me when I walked past my ex on 7th avenue (twice!) and he pretended that I didn’t exist
Fetch the Bolt Cutters by THEE Fiona Apple, because Fiona, our social distancing queen, has always been my Talmud, her songs shimmering, evolving, and living with me every year
Musicians have been reckoning with tumult this year as much as the rest of us, and the industry has dealt with loss on all fronts. I’d be remiss not to talk about how the passing of John Prine brought his music into my life, and McCoy Tyner, who has been a companion through good and bad over the years.
What would this overlong blob be without a list of the best things I read this year? While I left publishing temporarily, books, the news, and newsletters still took up a majority of my attention (duh and/or doomscrolling by any other name). I can’t be comprehensive, and frankly, there are already great roundups of the best longform this year out there, so this is mostly books and praising random writers.
Last year I wrote about peak newsletter. Apparently, my prediction was a bit premature as this year saw an even bigger Substack Boom. But two new newsletters in particular have delighted me: Aminatou Sow’s Crème de la Crème and Hunter Harris’ Hung Up (her ”this one line” series is true force of chaotic good on Blue Ivy’s internet). Relatedly, Sow and Ann Friedman’s Big Friendship was gifted to me by a dear friend and another bff and I are going to read it in tandem next week.
On the “Barack Obama published a 700+ page memoir, crippling the printing industry’s supply chains” front, grad school severely hamstrung my ability to read for pleasure, but I managed to get through almost 30 books this year, some old (Master and Margarita), most new-ish (Say Nothing, Nickel Boys). Four 2020 books in particular enthralled me:
Uncanny Valley: Anna Wiener’s memoir has been buzzed about since n+1 published her essay of the same name in 2016. Her ability to see, clear-eyed, the industry for both its foibles and allure captured that era when the excess and solipsism of the Valley seemed more of a cultural quirk than the harbinger of societal schism.
Transcendent Kingdom: Yaa Gyasi’s novel about faith, family, loss, and–naturally–grad school was deeply empathetic, relatable, and moving. I think this was my favorite book of the year. Following the life of a Ghanaian family that settles in Alabama, it captured the kind of emotional ennui that comes from having one foot in the belief of childhood and one foot in the bewilderment that comes from losing faith in the aftermath of tragedy.
Vanishing Half:Similarly to Transcendent Kingdom, Brit Bennett’s novel about siblings who are separated; it’s also about the ways that colorism can be internalized and the ways chosen family can (and cannot) replace your real kin. It was a compassionate story that captured the pain of abuse and abandonment in two pages in a way that Hanya Yanagihara couldn’t do in 720.
Dessert Person:Ok, so this is a cookbook, but it’s a good read, and the recipes are approachable and delicious. After all the BA Test Kitchen chaos this summer, it’s nice we didn’t have to cancel Claire. Make the thrice baked rye cookies!!!! You will thank me later.
Honorable mention goes to: Leave The World Behind for hitting the Severance/Station Eleven dystopian apocalypse novel sweet spot; Exciting Timesfor reminding me why I liked Sally Rooney; and Summerby Ali Smith, which wasn’t the strongest of the seasonal quartet, but was a series I enjoyed for two years.
Podcasts
I’m saving my most enthusiastic section for last: ever since 2018, I’ve been listening to an embarrassing amount of podcasts. Moving into a studio apartment will do that to you, as will grad school, add a pandemic to that equation and there’s a lot of time to fill with what has sort of become white noise to me (or, in one case, nice white parents noise). In addition to the shows that I’ve written about before (Still Processing, Popcast, Who? Weekly, and Why is This Happening?), these are the shows I started listening to this year that fueled my parasocial fire:
You’re Wrong About: If you like history, hate patriarchy, and are a millennial, you’ll love Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes’ deep dives into the most notable stories of the past few decades (think Enron and Princess Diana) and also some other cultural flashpoints that briefly but memorably shaped the national discourse (think Terri Schiavo, Elian González, and the Duke Lacrosse rape case).
Home Cooking: This mini series started (and ended) during the pandemic. As someone who stress baked her way through the past nine months, Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway’s show is filled with warmth, banter, and useful advice. Home Cooking has been a reassuring companion in the kitchen, and even though it will be a time capsule once we’re all vaccinated and close talking again, it’s still worth a listen for tips and inspiration while we’re hunkered down for the time being.
How Long Gone: I don’t really know how to explain this other than saying that media twitter broke my brain and enjoying Chris Black and Jason Stewart’s ridiculous banter is the price I pay for it.
Blank Check: Blank Check is like the GBBO of podcasts–Griffin Newman and David Sims’ enthusiasm for and encyclopedic knowledge of film, combined with their hilarious guests and inevitable cultural tangents is always a welcome distraction. Exploring a different film from a director’s oeuvre each week over the course of months, the podcast delves into careers and creative decisions with the passion of completists who want to honor the filmmaking process even when the finished products end up falling short. The Nancy Meyers and Norah Ephron series were favorites because I’d seen most of the movies, but I also have been enjoying the Robert Zemeckis episodes they’re doing right now. The possibility of Soderbergh comes up often (The Big Picture just did a nice episode about/with him), and I’d love to hear them talk about his movies or Spike Lee (or, obviously, Martin Scorsese).
