Fetch the Bolt Cutters; Release Me From This Gendered Cage!
One year ago Fiona Apple blessed us with an album that transcends gender, affirms disembodiment, and reveals a limitless self.
I’m going to try to put a lot of feelings I have about a song into something incoherent for you to read. This is about Fiona Apple. And this is about being trans. Welcome.
April 17th marks one year since the release of Fiona Apple's iconic album Fetch the Bolt Cutters, a fierce entrance back into the music scene after her eight year hiatus, and filled with more palpable vitriol for haters than her previous albums. Fetch the Bolt Cutters is a demand to release yourself, a reminder of who you are. It is a creation of a fearless, disembodied self.
Last June, with lockdown continuing full throttle and ostracized from the usual comings and goings of life, I came out as nonbinary. Quarantine demanded that I, like many others, stop performing and begin to recognize what it meant to be in my body for myself. It was something that I have struggled with since childhood, with constant ruminations about what life would be like if I had a different body. June 2019 was the first time I (albeit drunkenly) admitted these thoughts to someone I was not exactly close to, and never saw again afterward. Verbalizing the things I had always trapped in my mind was overwhelming, and as I rambled on and on to them, all I could think was “Oh my god shut up already they do not care about any of this.” Yet saying a lot of these things out loud primed me to come to terms with myself nearly one year later. Directly following that warm June night in 2019, I once again shut myself away, pressing on and disregarding any desires I had to discover what was missing. April 2020 awaited me, and Fetch the Bolt Cutters dropped, sending me (and the rest of the world) in a Fiona frenzy. FTBC became the first album to get a 10.0 rating by Pitchfork since Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010.
For a month after it's release, I would listen to the album on loop for hours as I laid under my covers, as I stretched out for another yoga session, as I tanned in the yard. Soon, I would go back to work, but for that month I spent an endless amount of time alone with and inside my body, and with and inside the album, becoming one with the notes, the gasps, the clangs, the empty space, the drums, and every time the opening notes of “I Want You to Love Me” traipsed over me, it felt like coming home. So I listened every chance I could, while my comforter weighed on my chest, while my body shifted from upward to downward dog, while the sunlight beat down on my closed eyelids and all I could feel was orange. Fetch the Bolt Cutters demanded a visceral encounter with my body, which involved an intimate re-reading of my existence within it and how to escape it.
Admittedly, FTBC feels very specific to women in lyric; Apple consistently showers praises on her ladies, shares her frustration with the disrespect women often face at the hands of men, and demands to be allowed to exist wholly the way she wants. This final point is, in my opinion, exactly what makes the album distinctly gender neutral. What Apple successfully pushes through, with her individual experience as a woman as her lens, is the futility of gender as merely a mechanism of control. Constantly being told what to do, how to act, to be silent, are all on account of her gender presentation. But with Fetch the Bolt Cutters, she escapes limitations; she knows no bounds, she is free from the constraints imposed on her, and as the logic follows, so are the rest of us.
Fetch the bolt cutters, I’ve been trapped in this gendered cage for too long. For Fiona, it isn’t her body that is caging her, but the series of men who force themselves on her body, a society that constantly tells her to be someone else. Her body and the way it is gendered is the root of the pain and the reason for the rage oozing from her throat. But her body is also her escape from the bullshit—her voice leading the way.
By experimenting with her voice, her sound, and her body, Apple fully personifies the music, embalming herself on the record. She becomes the album, wearing it like a new body. “I Want You to Love Me” kicks off a new era for Apple; she incites her form to change over the course of the album, extending experimental meaning to bodily art forms, and disembodiment of the self.
Releasing Fetch the Bolt Cutters just a month after quarantine began, Apple accosted us all as we had just begun to spend time with ourselves, our bodies, our emotions, and our partners, in very fresh— and often fraught —ways. During a time when everyday performance of gender is shifting and strict gender boundaries are fading, “I Want You to Love Me” is a song that visualizes the steps in finding yourself, demanding what you want, and existing within that want. It’s a love song to the process that is messy and non-linear — but the freedom within that process is entirely yours.
Apple’s voice croons during the song’s opening lines, “I’ve waited many years / Every print I left upon the track / Has led me here / And next year it will be clear / This was only leading me to that” reminding us of all it took for her to get here, while also simultaneously reiterating that “here” is not really anywhere but another step to “that.” It's about growth over time— none of us are the same person we were a year ago. And this rings true yearly, for most people, but most certainly for all of us during the 2020-2021 shift. And she is right— after years of waiting, of learning, of growing, we all learned a little bit more about ourselves— and for many, that had to do with our gender. Apple makes us feel that wherever we’ve arrived is only another halfway point; tomorrow is just around the corner with even more surprises. She sets up a history of the self, but also a history of the collective in this grounding entrance into the album.
As the song continues, her bravado shines through, demanding our attention. She belts, “I know none of this will matter in the long run / But I know a sound is still a sound around no one.” Just as we entered the throes of quarantine, we also entered the album through a beautiful testament to the body that holds you and a reminder that your existence is not dependent on those who choose not to see you.
She goes on, “While I’m in this body/ I want somebody to want / And I want what I want and I want/ You to love me.” She sings as she exists inside the track for all of us to hear. During the course of this song, she wants to fall in love, and she wants someone to love her back.
In the bridge, she screeches, commanding and desirous, “And I know that you know that you got / The potential to pick me up / And I want you to use it / Blast the music / Bang it, bite it, bruise it.” Apple knows that she is wanted when the lights are dim and clothes are sparse. She orders her suitor “Blast the music! Bang it! Bite it! Bruise it!” in a show of ferocity, as she attempts to really feel her bodily form, trying to understand what it feels like to be wanted. But there is a clear double entendre here. She speaks to us, who have the potential to pick up her music, listen to it, blast it, feel it, and really, truly wrestle with it. Both bodied & disembodied, with this verse Apple has given herself a recognizable form, while relieving herself of the task of having one. It is her final call and a reminder that the limitations of form do not exist for her, do not exist for us, and will not be abided by by any means.
The song goes through a myriad of sounds that work in tandem with the lyrics. Apple displays her generous vocal range over the course of the song, experiencing the modulations of her voice and the possibilities it carries. There are no barriers to her craft. Starting with a low croon, shifting to a deep belt, and lest we not forget the magnanimous ending—a high pitch, orgasmic breakthrough. A revelation, a release, a tribute to all the moments that lead to this apex.
By showing what she’s capable of with sound distortion, with vocal fry, with percussion and instrumentals, Apple presents to her listener a place that exists beyond. Her body is integral to the development of the sound, it simply exists as a place that carries her to her highest potential.
Anti-trans activism is at an all time high. Substack gives paid deals to people who deny the existence of transgender people— and people whose work has been cited in anti-trans legislation across the country. Here are some examples of the laws in the works at this time.
Print media is just as, and often more complicit in the deranged attack against trans people.
I don’t make any money from Substack, which means they don’t make any money from me, which is the reason I remain on the platform. But I will continue to put pressure on them, like many other trans writers who have left the platform, to answer for their promotion of harmful ideas.
In the US, 33 states are attempting to pass anti-trans legislation, which means trans people and kids need your help. Follow people who share actions, and partake in those actions in any capacity you can (making calls to representatives from your bed is so easy), and help speak up for a minority that is often left in the dust.
Protect trans kids who know their own power at a young age and are able to fight for what they want. Protect trans elders who are shuttered inside themselves until they are able to share a truth they didn’t have the language for until they did. Protect all trans people in their own journey to discover what it means to be.
To close out, I would like to thank Fiona Apple for reminding us that our existence is not dependent on others’ validation of us. “I know a sound is still a sound around no one” she posits, challenging us to view ourselves as that which is essential to our own lives, effectively putting the power back into our hands.
Here’s a link to Fiona creating the opening percussion of “I Want You to Love Me,” and then turning to her piano for the ascending arpeggio that follows. (I’ve been told it's not exactly an arpeggio, but maybe an ascending chord progression. I’m not a musical theorist, don’t ask me!) Shout out to Zara & Julia for helping me out with your piano smarts, Miss Marina really did her thing with y’all.
Here’s another link to an article I’ve been wanting to read about FTBC, and maybe you will too.
Thank you for reading! Happy one year to Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Please share with your friends and Fiona Apple lovers everywhere.