Fiona apple best songs

Top 10 Fiona Apple Songs

Photo: jareed, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Our Top 10 Fiona Apple songs list looks at the songs of one of the most original musical artists to arrive on the music scene in the past thirty years. Fiona Apple released her first album entitled Tidal in 1996. The album and the accompanying singles and videos that were released from the record brought her instant fame as she become both a critic and fan favorite. It would be a few years before Fiona Apple followed up her debut album. It was a trend that would continue for the rest of her career as more time would pass between each album release.

Fiona Apple’s second album entitled When The Pawn…..(abbreviated) further proved that Fiona Apple was an incredibly gifted songwriter that sounded really like no other artists. Of course she was compared to Alanis Morrissette and Tori Amos, but she really sounded nothing like them. She did have the same intensity of Alanis Morissette but here vocie sounds comletey diffenet. Fiona Apple was always more of a musical trendsetter than follower. She has more in common with an artist such as Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls who started out about a year later than the other female pop artists of the 90s and 2000s. German Cabaret and early 1960s jazz noir flows more thorough the music of Fiona Apple than pop.

Fiona Apple took six years between her second and third albums. In 2005, Fiona Apple released the record Extraordinary Machine. Another seven years would pass before Fiona Apple issued her fourth album titled The Idler Wheel… Her fifth album and also her most recent record was released in 2020 entitled Fetch The Bolt Cutters. It was an album that many people feel is the best of her career.

Our Top 10 Fiona Apple songs list is just a simple presentation of our favorite Fiona Apple songs. There are so many more that we love, and of course we missed so many great ones that we would have like to preset. But a top 10 list can only present 10, so here we go……

# 10 – Ladies

We open up our top 10 Fiona Apple songs list with a track from her most recent album entitled Fetch The Bolt Cutters. Upon release, the album was instantly hailed as the best album Fiona Apple had ever released Critics claimed it a masterpiece, fans could not stop praising the records originality. Supposedly recorded on Apple’s basic consumer recording software program Garage Band, Fiona Apple delivered an album that proved if the songs are great, it doesn’t matter what type of recording device one uses.

Fiona Apple ‘album Fetch The Bolt Cutters utilizes many rhythmic devises to fuels the record’s song arrangements. Its done in a similar way to the methods that Tom Waits developed in the 1980s on his brilliant recordings Swordfishtrombones. Yet, there is still that Fiona Apple “ill do it my way,” attitude in it that makes it very effective and still original.

The track “Ladies,” is a great one. It of course is aimed towards a female audience as it speaks clearly to woman. Nonetheless, the melody, the groove, and the originality of this brilliant piece of music can be enjoyed by all.

# 9 – Sleep To Dream

Continuing with our top 10 Fiona Apple songs we turn to one of her earlier hits. The song “Sleep To Dream,” was released on Fiona Apple’s debut album Tidal. The album was released in 1993. The song “Sleep To Dream,” was released as the second single from the record. The song’s video won an MTV award for Best New Artist in a Video. The song’s moody dream like groove and melody set the tone for many of Fiona Apple’s songs that played a major role in the singer’s originality and appeal.

# 8 – Extraordinary Machine

“Extraordinary Machine,” was the title track to Fiona Apple’s third album Extraordinary Machine . The song was never released as a single, but it stands as our favorite track on the LP. There is a certain carnival atmosphere to the song that is highly addicting and of course just like so many of her other songs, very original sounding.

# 7 – Paper Bag

As we continue along with our Top 10 Fiona Apple songs list we turn to the great recording “Paper Bag.” The song was released on Fiona Apple’s third album Extraordinary Machine . The song was also released as the third single from the record. While so many of Fiona Apple songs titled ore towards the Tori Amos side of pop music, this one owes more to The Beatles than most of her other work.

# 6 – Fast As You Can

Fiona Apple not only composed and recorded brilliant songs, she released incredibly fascinating artistic videos. “Fast As You Can,” is a perfect example of a true artist knocking it out of the stadium. “Fast As You Can,” served as the initial single released on her sophomore album When The Pawn….. The album was released in 1999.

# 5 – Every Single Night

Fiona Apple is undeniably the queen of moody music, but this one is pretty creepy. And we love it The music reminds us of one of those dream that continues to flash before your eyes. One that you want to forget, but sadly keep trying to figure out. “Every Single Night,” was released on Fiona Apples album The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do. Like her When The Pawn… album the record also had a shorter title simply entitled The Idler Wheel…. The album The Idler Wheel… was released in 2012.

# 4 – Criminal

Do you remember the first time you saw the video for “Criminal.” We can guarantee you didn’t turn the channel. We could also argue you probably never changed the channel whenever this song came on. From the song’s grooving opening bass line to Fiona Apple’s sultry guilty confession, viewers were hooked forever. The song appeared on Fiona Apple’s 1997 debut album Tidal. It was the album’s fourth single released from the record. The song also stands as Fiona Apple’s most successful song on the charts. It is her only single to break the Billboard Top 100 as it peaked at number 21.

# 3 – Hot Knife

We had a really hard time picking which songs we wanted t0 place on this Top 10 Fiona Apple songs list from Fiona Apple’s album Fetch The Bolt Cutters. Every song on the album is so brilliantly original. Nonetheless, the next two songs on this list we could not ignore. At number three on this list we present the great track “Hot Knife.” Watch this video and you will witness an artist becoming a master artist that is simply stunning

# 2 – Shameika

“Shameika,” is just one of those songs that leaves you speechless the first time you hear it. It’s also one of those songs that makes you hit replay instantly after the first time you hear it. This is as original as it gets. The song “Shameika,” was released on Fiona Apple’s brilliant 2020 album Fetch The Bolt Cutters.

# 1 – Slow Like Honey

There are a handful of songs in the classic rock catalog that have the power to really hypnotize the listener. Fiona Apple’s song “Slow Like Honey,” leads the way. We are not just taking changing one’s mood, we are talking total hypotonization. The mood that Fiona Apple set on this one simply cant be printed on this website. This is powerful stuff that will touch your senses in a very carnal way whether your female or male. If we had to pick one Fiona Apple song to present to someone who never heard of his great artist, this would be the one. And that’s why its number one.

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The 10 Best Fiona Apple Songs

The 10 Best Fiona Apple Songs

Where are you, Fiona Apple? After a banner 2012, the singer-songwriter recently cancelled her only scheduled appearance for 2013, at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound festival; she also torpedoed a slew of South American tour dates late last year with no signs of rescheduling on the horizon.

Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised — disappearance is part and parcel of Apple’s career trajectory. Apple says she rarely ventures outside her Los Angeles home, except when visiting the L.A. club Largo, where she occasionally hops on stage with pal and resident performer Jon Brion. She doesn’t drive and claims there is no one she speaks to on a daily basis. She’s released only four albums in 17 years — 2012’s The Idler Wheel was her first in seven years; it was another six years between the prior one, Extraordinary Machine, and its predecessor, her second effort, When the Pawn …. She’s that especially rare public figure in the digital age — one who still cultivates an air of mystery and distance.

It’s been a long, strange journey for Apple since bursting onto the scene in the mid-’90s with the porny video for “Criminal” from her debut album Tidal, and the infamous “This world is bullshit!” speech at the 1997 MTV Music Video Awards. She (perhaps rightly) took a lot of shit for it — earning a scathing rebuke from no less than Janeane Garafalo in a recorded comedy sketch. 1999’s When the Pawn … was the first classic Apple album — a much more mature effort that nonetheless sold well short of Tidal’s numbers. By the time she famously broke down on stage at the Roseland Ballroom in New York in 2000, her stint as a unit-shifting pop star was all but over.

Her third album, 2005’s Extraordinary Machine, came with a complicated backstory featuring a producer switcheroo midway through its recording (from longtime collaborator Brion to Mike Elizondo, best known for his work with Dr. Dre), a leak of the unfinished Brion tracks, and alleged record label consternation that launched the “Free Fiona” fan campaign aimed at pressuring Sony to put out the album. Ultimately, Elizondo’s version was the one to see official release; with Brion’s take still floating around online, fans remain divided on which is better.

Then, nearly seven years of silence. After finally resurfacing at last year’s SXSW, Apple released The Idler Wheel — a stark, stunning, and percussion-oriented record, arguably her best yet. Unfortunately it was overshadowed in part by her arrest for hashish on the Texas border — for a hot second she was a cultural flashpoint again, and people like Perez Hilton, as they have been wont to do, said stupid things. Still, 2012 was a huge year for Apple, with The Idler Wheel placing high on nearly every major music publication’s year-end list (and topping Stereogum’s own list). The unlikely transition from laughingstock MTV princess to irrepressible indie queen was complete.

Well, it was nice to have her back while it lasted. Given recent events and her track record, it’s unlikely we’ll hear new music from Apple anytime soon. Luckily, she has been exceptionally consistent if not especially productive — her four studio albums are each overflowing with riches, filled with songs documenting emotional trauma with remarkable clarity, chops, and sometimes even a little humor. Here are her 10 best.

10. “Fast As You Can” (from When The Pawn …, 1999)

It’s maybe the quintessential Fiona Apple lyric: “Oh darling, it’s so sweet you think you know how crazy I am.” By the time the skittering “Fast As You Can” hit the streets in 1999, Apple’s identity as a pop eccentric had already been fashioned. There was the MTV speech; her relationship with magician David Blaine; and the cancellation of the final leg of her first tour, due to “personal family problems.” “Fast As You Can,” the first single from When The Pawn …, knowingly winks at those accusations while galloping away from the fear that comes with allowing yourself to be in an emotionally vulnerable relationship. Things may be going swimmingly now, but eventually she warns that “my pretty mouth will frame the phrases that will disprove your faith in man.” Damn.

9. “I Know” (from When The Pawn …, 1999)

Gosh, this one is just a bummer. “So be it, I’m your crowbar — if that’s what I am so far,” Apple sings, “until you get out of this mess.” “I Know” closes out When The Pawn … on a devastating note, a song about being the third wheel and hoping against hope that things will work out. Apple’s delivery is heartbreaking, and the song’s direct denouement is especially affecting coming from a singer better known for complex metaphors and five-dollar words.

8. “Get Gone” (from When The Pawn …, 1999)

Apple is a gutsy singer, often willing to push her voice to the point of distortion. On “Get Gone,” she shouts the chorus like she’s trying to project a swarm of angry bees from her mouth. “Nothing to figure out, I gotta get him out, it’s time the truth came out that he don’t give a shit about me!” In a career full of caustic, cathartic break-up anthems, “Get Gone” may be the best of the bunch. It’s a little immature, sure, but that’s half the fun — if you’ve never sung along as she commands her significant other to “fuckin’ go,” you’ve probably never been a jilted lover.

7. “Criminal” (from Tidal, 1996)

It’s difficult to view “Criminal” in a vacuum, because it’s so tied to that damn video, so tied to its omnipresence, so tied to the era in which it was recorded. Haters gonna hate, but take away all the bullshit and you’re left with a pretty great song — the smoky piano, the strings that pop in and out, and the weighty guilt that comes with using sexuality to get whatever the hell you want. Like the best short stories, it grabs you with a knock-out opener: “I’ve been a bad, bad girl — I’ve been careless with a delicate man.” Apple sings it in that preternaturally mature alto, and you get the distinct impression that she knew exactly what kind of reaction it would get. If you didn’t see her on her 2012 tour (and shame on you if you didn’t — every stop was filled with vein-popping, teeth-gnashing exorcist performances that can only come from a performer at her peak), make sure you catch a recent performance of “Criminal” on YouTube. Much like Radiohead’s relationship with “Creep,” Apple attacks it with disdain — as though violently deconstructing it will give her ownership once again. It’s a sight to behold.

6. “Anything We Want” (from The Idler Wheel, 2012)

The years have been kind to Apple’s voice. It’s always been deep and mature, but early in her career she had a tendency toward forced sultriness. Age has turned it into a more naturally handsome, cragged instrument, with nooks and crannies that she fills with wounded confidence — a trick that’s especially effective on “Anything We Want.” Coming after the ruthless “Regret” on The Idler Wheel, “Anything We Want” is a relief, a breath of stately, strutting optimism, full of come-ons and junkyard percussion. The chorus — “And then we can do anything we want” — is a tired but proud celebration of a victory after a battle well-fought. The war is over; time to enjoy the spoils.

5. “Not About Love” (from Extraordinary Machine, 2005)

What makes us say terrible, almost comically mean things to our loved ones? “‘What is this posture I have to stare at?’ That’s what he said when I was sitting up straight!” Apple complains in “Not About Love,” a song about the brutal war of words that can erupt in relationships gone bad. In a song filled with killer lines, Apple drops one of her best ones by describing the phenomenon thusly: “Conservation once colored by esteem / became dialogue as a diagram of a play for blood.” “Not About Love” looks forward to the stripped-down sound Apple would perfect on The Idler Wheel — it’s all piano, rumbling base, a few well-timed power chords and muscular, propulsive drumming courtesy of song-MVP Questlove.

4. “Get Him Back” (from Extraordinary Machine, 2005)

Pure unadulterated violence, this one — just listen to the way Apple slams into her piano on the four beat. The song’s title is a massive understatement — what she’s talking about here is pure annihilation. “Wait till I get him back / he won’t have a back to scratch / yeah, keep turning that chin / and you will see my face as I figure how to kill what I cannot catch.” Holy shit! In the third verse, she flips the title’s meaning as she tries to get back the one who got away. “I’m going to bring him home and I’ll watch him unpack,” she says. Such a great image — a little funny, a little pathetic.

3. “Werewolf” (from The Idler Wheel, 2012)

“Nothing wrong when a song ends in the minor key.” Sixty-plus years of rock and roll songs about broken hearts and nobody thought of that line until just last year? Man. “Werewolf” is the sparsest and loveliest moment on The Idler Wheel, and one of the most compassionate and empathetic songs in her repertoire — yeah, you bit my head off like a shark, “but then again, I was waving around, a bleeding open wound.” The unexpected highlight is a found-sound layered over the song’s conclusion — a recording of distant children playfully screaming. Does it represent nostalgia? A loss of innocence? Regardless, it brings the song to a strange, disquieting, and powerful conclusion.

2. “Every Single Night” (from The Idler Wheel, 2012)

Does any pop musician capture the clicks and hums of a restless mind better than Fiona Apple? “Every Single Night” is filled with vivid, disturbing imagery — of white-flame butterflies beating against the brain, ideas that “trickle down the spine” and swell into a blaze, and second skeletons forced beneath the skin. Apple spends most of the song singing through gritted teeth, before erupting into a war-whoop in the chorus. In fact, “Every Single Night” is the sound of tiny war being waged — an uncertain but determined battle against the idiosyncrasies of the brain that are capable of causing such grief.

1. “Paper Bag” (from When The Pawn …, 1999)

“Paper Bag” exists outside of time. If not for that wonderfully self-aware opening line (“I was starin’ at the sky / just looking for a star / to pray on, or wish on, or something like that”), you could almost picture Judy Garland or Doris Day singing it. But few could imbue a song with such subtle ache and longing — almost quiet hysteria — that Apple does here (there are unrequited love songs, and then there are unrequited Fiona Apple love songs, you know?). By the second half, as the strings swell and Apple just lets go, “Paper Bag” seems to take on a life of its own, independent of its creator, almost floating away. “Hunger hurts but starving works,” Apple says. The hurt is gone, until the next time.

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