Listening to FTBC, and seeing how her discography has evolved stylistically and thematically over the years, there is something so comforting and inspiring about the personal growth and outlook on life you see develop over decades.
After studying art in college and getting a lot more serious and conceptual about it, my favorite way to engage with art of any kind has really become a lot more about looking at how it fits into the context of an artist's life and whole body of work.
You always see ideas develop and solidify over years and it gives you a ton of perspective into what the work actually means to the artist. You get to hear a kind of wisdom that only comes from experience and reflection. FTBC specifically, changed my outlook on life and mentally aged me like at least 5 years when i first listened to it. Like a slap in the face from your mother as she tells you exactly how little you understand life and how narrow-minded your world is as a child.
There's this artist, chris burden, who made all these masochistic, self punishing performance pieces in university (literally getting shot in the arm, or crucified to the top of a VW Buggy). The kind of work me and every angsty art student has thought of as the "meaningful" stuff, the deep stuff. And the irony and beauty of his body of work is this absurd transition later in life towards making these joyful, family friendly, whimsical miniature metropolis-es. He was in his 20s getting shot as a performance, and in his 60s building glorified hot wheels courses.
And it gave me this indescribable hope for the future and realization that the good in life is ALL that matters. What you make of pain, matters because it should be good. The hurt you've suffered, matters because you can heal from it. Life itself, matters because it has love and joy and human connection with strangers.
I see so much of this artistic growth in FTBC, and across her discography. You look at tidal and when the pawn and they're these great powerful works of pain and hurt and anger, and I'm drawn to them and many people are because of the impulse to stew in that pain, validate that resentment. You see a lot more healing and a desire to move forward with extraordinary machine and idler wheel, but something is stuck sometimes in that past.
But then you listen to Relay and it's this punch in the gut, staring down that impulse and cutting through everything, straight down to a fundementally human culture of rhythm and chant. I think the percussion in the album, as great as it all is, serves it's purpose most in just cutting through all the bullshit of history and classicism, down to the very soul and essence of being human.
The whole album is just so much more nuanced imo than her younger works. You can see this journey of pain and hurt, being held down by the past, stuck as the one with righteous anger who never gets to just enjoy living for youself. You can see the years it takes to heal the soul, to develop a perspective that moving forward matters, for yourself and for the people you care about, for strangers you could otherwise help and connect with.
The album has anger but everytime it is expressed, it stops being about just the artist, just Fiona. It's not about what in the past was right or wrong, what should have happened, how it made her feel. It's an album centered on how to move forward and how to heal with compassion for the people that you can still be there for. There's no trite "forgiveness is a virtue", because some things are unforgivable, but it will tell you bluntly that you're only hurting yourself and shutting out others when you hold onto the pain of being wronged so tightly.
Ladies and newspaper are without a doubt some of the most nuanced songs I've ever heard in terms of message. A serious listen to this album is as productive and nuanced as reading a bell hooks book about the role of love in feminism. Hell, just the line 'There's a dress in the closet. Don't get rid of it, you look good in it. I never fit in it. It was never mine, it belonged to an ex wife of another ex of mine. She left it behind with a note, one line, it said "I don't know if I'm coming across but I'm really trying." She was very kind.' is amazing. It's poetry doing what poetry should. (Sure, I'm a gay man so I can't speak much about how it resonates with women, but I've had my share of gender troubles and the outlook she has on it all is so intelligent and compassionate)
I listened to the album during lockdown after my high-school English teacher recommended it. I had only heard fiona apple on a cover of another song at that point. I was an extremely angsty, mentally ill, closeted teen living with my very traditional parents 24/7 and just stewing in resentment and really justifiable anger. I felt awful, and thinking about how unfair it was and how I wasn't in the wrong only made it worse and I loved making it worse. 5 songs in, relay played and that line about resentment, entering the endless race, then the repetition of the "chorus", hit me so hard I started sobbing. It reached into my soul at a time where I was nowhere near old enough or experienced enough in life to see the way my resentment was killing me, and just told me in no uncertain terms to grow the fuck up and keep moving for the sake of myself, or live forever in pain and miss out on everything.
This album will always mean so much to me, and I wanted to share my very longwinded thoughts and appreciation for the art of it all. To this day, I still like to make art about my emotions and the struggle of it, but it keeps me pushing myself to try to think past it, deeper into what I want out of my art practice long term. It keeps me coming back to ideas of human connection when I'm so often concerned with the self.
