Just like the debut by Tori Amos, who was also raped a few years before her debut album, Apple's Tidal was such stunning brilliance, and you can't help feeling partly-fuelled by the preceding few years of working through the emotions and torment the violence perpetrated on each.
While Amos's "Me and a gun" dealt directly with the violence, perhaps because she was older and more able to deal directly to it, "Sullen Girl" is so tenderly tragic, a symphony of sweeping, drowning emotions that so powerfully echo the adolescent mindset. Screaming her overwhelmed emotions with the line: "it's calm under the waves, in the blue of my oblivion", Apple emotionally retreated, retracted: "They don't know I used to sail the deep and tranquil sea, but he washed my shore and he took my pearl and left an empty shell of me." It's such a powerfully beautiful song for all its tragedy, BECAUSE it so poetically captures the theme of her emotions following that event.
There are such horrible acts of violence some men perpetrate against women, but sometimes, just sometimes, the world is blessed from the depths of these womens' recovery with beautiful artistry of such tender and insightful expression.
And, on Tidal, without doubt, "Sullen Girl" is Fiona Apple's pinnacle.
Just like the debut by Tori Amos, who was also raped a few years before her debut album, Apple's Tidal was such stunning brilliance, and you can't help feeling partly-fuelled by the preceding few years of working through the emotions and torment the violence perpetrated on each.
While Amos's "Me and a gun" dealt directly with the violence, perhaps because she was older and more able to deal directly to it, "Sullen Girl" is so tenderly tragic, a symphony of sweeping, drowning emotions that so powerfully echo the adolescent mindset. Screaming her overwhelmed emotions with the line: "it's calm under the waves, in the blue of my oblivion", Apple emotionally retreated, retracted: "They don't know I used to sail the deep and tranquil sea, but he washed my shore and he took my pearl and left an empty shell of me." It's such a powerfully beautiful song for all its tragedy, BECAUSE it so poetically captures the theme of her emotions following that event.
There are such horrible acts of violence some men perpetrate against women, but sometimes, just sometimes, the world is blessed from the depths of these womens' recovery with beautiful artistry of such tender and insightful expression.
And, on Tidal, without doubt, "Sullen Girl" is Fiona Apple's pinnacle.