When The Pawn - Fiona Apple

Joint Society Review

Write up by Ben Smith.

Receiving a Grammy award nomination for best alternative album and being ranked at 108 on Rolling Stone’s 500 greatest albums of all time, Fiona Apple’s 1999 album ‘When the Pawn…’ expresses intense emotions in the form of 10 passionate tracks. Members of the society felt these emotions through the ‘amazing lyricism’ and powerful vocals. Words such as ‘raw’, ‘honest’ and ‘angry’ came up a lot in feedback with many relating deeply with the artist’s experiences.

The album’s full title is a 90-word poem written by Fiona when she was feeling down due to her portrayal in a Spin magazine interview. It acts as a letter, or a reminder, to herself of how to push past criticism and this sense of being a very personal project is noticeable in the fact that many of the lyrics come from actual things people said or things she thought. For example, the closing track, ‘I Know’, was written for Fiona Apple’s boyfriend at a time where everything seemed to be changing. The most streamed track, ‘Paper Bag’, (which was found to be disliked by none of the society members) references an experience of seeing a dove and taking it as a good omen, before realising it was just a paper bag.

People expressed a range of feelings when listening to this album, with some happy, sad, angry and shocked faces. These reviews are evident that ‘When the pawn…’ is a

very unique album which very strongly portrays a sense of individuality and unapologetic-ness. Its ‘genius’ lyrics were likened to the pages of a personal diary.

Aside from ‘Love Ridden’, no songs seemed to stand out as dislikeable, with some even going to far as to say there are ‘no bad songs’ due to it being the ‘greatest album of all time’.

Beyond the album, respondents expressed their own love for Fiona Apple herself. She is described as being ‘the coolest’ and ‘the bee’s knees’. The societies love for the album and the artist results in an average score of 8.3/10.

A special thanks goes to Reia for choosing this album, and for her amazing research that is included in this review.

Society Rating - 8.3/10