Anything We Want

Album: The Idler Wheel... (2012)
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Songfacts®:

  • This naked, romantic ballad features some unorthodox instrumentation. Apple recalled to Pitchfork: "On 'Anything We Want,' I've been playing this stupid pipe thing live, but that sound was actually me at my desk with a pair of scissors, a tin full of burnt-cedar sashays, and a plastic cup. I was hitting everything with scissors and the cedar was flying all over the place."
  • Apple sings on this love song, "Let's pretend we're eight years old playing hooky, I draw on the wall and you can play UFC rookie." Its one of many allusions to childhood on The Idler Wheel. Apple explained why to Pitchfork: "I have a thing with wanting to get back to childhood. Right before I made the album, I would get depressed thinking about when I was a kid. I used to love to make things - you couldn't drag me away for dinner because I was always writing a story or something. I've always said I don't want to have kids," she continued. "But up in my hotel room right now, the books I have with me are parenting books - I had one about facial expressions and what they mean with babies that I gave to [ex-boyfriend] David Blaine's wife Alizee. This book I have upstairs is called Raising Happiness. I don't want a kid at all, but I do like reverse-engineering myself; managing and parenting myself."

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