Paper Bag
Fiona Apple
A jazz-inflected piano figure opens the track with a slightly off-kilter bounce, strings arriving like memory returning unbidden. The production on this 1999 track feels both intimate and slightly theatrical, as though the song is being performed in an empty theater for an audience of one. Apple's voice operates in a middle register, conversational at first, then climbing into something more desperate and exposed as the lyric accumulates weight. The song maps the peculiar grief of reaching for comfort and finding only the mechanics of longing — hunger that cannot be satisfied by what's in front of you. There's an extended metaphor running through the whole piece about physical craving as emotional substitute, and Apple deploys it with the precision of a short story writer rather than a pop lyricist. The rhythm section swings loosely, giving the track a restless, searching quality that matches its subject. Horns drift in during the chorus like a memory of warmth. This is music for introspective walks in autumn, for sitting in a diner alone with coffee gone cold, for that particular feeling of being lonely in a way that's entirely your own making.
slow
1990s
intimate, theatrical, slightly off-kilter
American alternative
Jazz, Indie. Jazz-Inflected Singer-Songwriter. melancholic, nostalgic. Begins with restless searching and accumulates into the grief of hunger that cannot be satisfied.. energy 3. slow. danceability 3. valence 3. vocals: conversational mezzo, emotionally escalating, precise and literary. production: jazz piano, loose rhythm section, drifting horns, chamber strings. texture: intimate, theatrical, slightly off-kilter. acousticness 7. era: 1990s. American alternative. Sitting alone in a diner with cold coffee, feeling lonely in a way entirely of your own making.