Fluxblog
December 2nd, 2022 4:56pm

Too Shaky To Hold


Fiona Apple “Paper Bag”

Fiona Apple repeats the chorus of “Paper Bag” three times at the end of the song, each time with significantly different phrasing that maintains the shape of the melody but changes all the emotional emphasis. I doubt she’s ever sung this song the same way twice – she’s the kind of singer who really lives in the moment of any song she’s singing, and that presence in the moment makes all the little instinctive decisions captured in this studio recording all the more precious. She takes on a conversational tone through the verses in large part to sell the ironic humor in the lyrics, but by the time she’s running through these choruses she’s mostly riding the wave of the melody and arrangement, or in some moments ducking it or moving to the side of it. She speeds up, she slows down, she builds to little crescendos but climaxes by delivering the most crucial line as an understated and conspiratorial aside – “but starving…it works.”

“Paper Bag” is a song about having an unrequited crush and knowing in the moment that the person who’s taking up so much space in your mind is a mythologized and romanticized figure who’s only partly the actual person who exists in the world. She’s in love with a story she’s telling herself, and part of that story is in the failure to connect, the distance between them, the inevitability of this not becoming anything real. She gets the drama and excitement of the feeling, but none of the risk of being vulnerable with someone else. You could call it self-sabotage, but she knows what she’s doing and everything is going according to plan. This a lot of why the song feels light and comedic – she’s in on the joke, and knows that the joke is on her.

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