Ladies

Album: Fetch The Bolt Cutters (2020)
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Songfacts®:

  • In this song, Fiona Apple addresses women who have been the victims of cheating. Instead of directing their anger at the mistress, she encourages these ladies to blame the man. Blaming the other woman is misplaced, Apple feels, and just pits women against each other.

    Apple's grandfather cheated on her grandmother and ended up marrying his mistress. All her life, the grandmother blamed the woman instead of her cheating husband, who Fiona thought was the real culprit. When Apple herself got cheated on, she took her own advice and leveled her anger at the guy.
  • Most songs about cheating are filled with vitriol or despair, but Apple takes a lighthearted approach here, letting the paramour know she's welcome to keep anything she left behind in the guy's medicine cabinet or kitchen cupboards. She even offers her the dress she left in his closet.
  • The line "Fruit bat cuter than a button mutton-head maniac" is a goofy lyric Apple threw in for levity. "Bat" is a play on the word "batty," indicating a crazy person.
  • This is the first Fiona Apple song with music she didn't write. Her band members Sebastian Steinberg and David Garza are credited as the composers. Steinberg played bass on the track; Garza played vibraphone and mellotron.
  • Along with "Newspaper," This is one of two tracks on Fetch The Bolt Cutters that Apple's sister, the cabaret singer Maude Maggart, sings on.

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