Fiona Apple fans can rejoice — the “Criminal” singer has just dropped her first track in five years. But steel yourself for the raw footage and gripping story — and get ready to dive deep into the unfathomable injustices of the criminal justice system.
Apple, 47, has long been open about her own battles — her mental health issues (extreme anxiety, OCD, an eating disorder, more) as well as her past substance abuse problems — but now, she’s putting the focus on other women. Women who are jailed during their pretrial period, a time when most can’t make bail. The effects of not being able to make bail are devastating to their families, their children. Sometimes Child Protective Services (CPS) is called and the kids are taken away.
It’s a topic Apple sings about with a mix of frustration and poignancy on her new song, which dropped in the early morning hours of Thursday, May 7.
Overlaid with home videos of the jailed women playing, joyfully, with their families on the outside, Apple sings — and keeps a steady drumbeat with her hands — as she belts out verses like: “She took on extra shifts, still couldn’t pay the bail / No danger, no flight risk, but she will stay in jail / She was not convicted of anything, he was not convicted of anything.”
“Won’t you let her go home?” Apple repeats on the chorus.
“I hope that this song, and the images shared with me, can help to show what is at stake when someone is kept in pretrial detention,” said Apple in a press release, per Rolling Stone. “I give this song in friendship and respect to all who have experienced the pain of pretrial detention and to the women of the group’s leadership who have taught me so much and whom I truly love.”
The last music Apple released was in 2020, when she dropped her critically-acclaimed album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, which scored her a 2021 Grammy for Best Alternative Album. That same year, she also scored another win for Best Rock Performance for her song “Shameika.”
As fans will remember, Apple canceled the Southeast Asia dates of her tour in order to be with her dying dog.
“Here’s the thing,” the “I Want You to Love Me” singer wrote at the time, announcing the news. “I have a dog Janet, and she’s been ill for almost two years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly … I know that she is coming close to point where she will stop being a dog, and instead, be part of everything … I can’t leave her now, please understand. If I go away again, I’m afraid she’ll die and I won’t have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out.”
