Valentine

Album: The Idler Wheel... (2012)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • This song finds Apple taking on two voices to convey her feelings about the fallout from a broken relationship. While the first one is brusque and dangerous to herself, the second is more innocent and childlike. "I stand no chance of growing up," she sings as we hear her tearfully try to cope with a dinner date with her ex.
  • Apple sings first with a self-destructive voice:

    While you were watching someone else
    I stared at you and cut myself


    Speaking with Interview Magazine, she expressed her concerns about that lyric: "I was a little afraid of putting that line in because I didn't want to make it sound cool," Apple said, "because I don't cut myself… I used to be somebody that would cut themselves, and it is about wanting to feel something. But something that I do... I mean, this is totally from an actual situation of me watching someone watching someone else being really alive - not quite in the way it seems in the song - but after a while I realize that I've dug holes in my palm with my fingernails. I just tend to do things to myself that I don't realize I'm doing. Sometimes I bite my lip so that it splits and hurts, and yet I can't stop. And sometimes I'd play shows on the last run, I'd scratch my neck while I was singing, and I'd horrified to see these red streaks of blood after. I'd go back after meet-and-greets, and I would look in the mirror and be horrified because there would be, like, just streaks, like I'd gone like this." [Mimes scratching her neck.]

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Rosanne Cash

Rosanne CashSongwriter Interviews

Rosanne talks about the journey that inspired her songs on her album The River & the Thread, including a stop at the Tallahatchie Bridge.

Booker T. Jones

Booker T. JonesSongwriter Interviews

The Stax legend on how he cooked up "Green Onions," the first time he and Otis Redding saw hippies, and if he'll ever play a digital organ.

Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake & PalmerSongwriter Interviews

Greg talks about writing songs of "universal truth" for King Crimson and ELP, and tells us about his most memorable stage moment (it involves fireworks).

Charlie Daniels

Charlie DanielsSongwriter Interviews

Charlie discusses the songs that made him a Southern Rock icon, and settles the Devil vs. Johnny argument once and for all.

Experience Nirvana with Sub Pop Founder Bruce Pavitt

Experience Nirvana with Sub Pop Founder Bruce PavittSong Writing

The man who ran Nirvana's first label gets beyond the sensationalism (drugs, Courtney) to discuss their musical and cultural triumphs in the years before Nevermind.

Timothy B. Schmit of the Eagles

Timothy B. Schmit of the EaglesSongwriter Interviews

Did this Eagle come up with the term "Parrothead"? And what is it like playing "Hotel California" for the gazillionth time?