Ladies, Ladies, Ladies: Exploring Female Friendships in Fiona Apple's 'Fetch The Bolt Cutters' and Charli XCX's 'Brat'
It's so confusing sometimes to be a girl
It’s an apple summer, alright. I can measure this in three metrics: the number of apples growing on the tree in my family’s garden, not counting the parakeets that perch and protest that, though they may be green, they are not to be picked; the number of times I play Charli XCX’s latest album, Brat, over the huge sound system at work; lastly, by how many lyrics I can remember from Fiona Apple’s Grammy-award winning masterpiece, Fetch the Bolt Cutters. It’s not easy. A lot of the time I let her do the talking, and the drumming, and the dolphin noises. It was only recently I started to draw comparisons, mostly between the latter two, although I’m sure there’s something to be said about parakeet friendships, just by someone more knowledgeable in ornithology than me. Both albums grapple (haha) with feelings of inferiority compared to their female peers, or in other cases, simple aggression. While much of Brat and Fetch the Bolt Cutters deals with heterosexual relationships, I feel that the crux of both albums’ themes are Aitchison and Apple’s respective confrontations of their feelings towards female friendships.
Charli XCX’s remix of ‘Girl, So Confusing’, featuring the long-rumoured subject of the original, Lorde, has seemingly set a new precedent for feuds, both in and out of pop. The lyric ‘let’s work it out on the remix’ has been applied to the US Presidential race, Zuckerberg v Musk, even tennis. The track largely deals with misunderstandings, whether it be about making plans for going out, or whether the other person enjoys your company at all. To release a song nonchalantly admitting to misgivings about a fellow artist, and then release a version of said song with them strikes me as an unusually move in the face of internet gossip. Female musicians are constantly pitted against each other - take one look at the back-and-forth diss tracks between Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj - but rarely do audiences see such an open admission and subsequent reconciliation. Aitchison’s original lyrics, such as ‘We talk about making music/But I don’t know if it’s honest’ cement the uncertainty of a professional, let alone personal, relationship, especially when both parties are subject to international media scrutinisation. A great deal of what - and who - we consume musically is derived from social media, which naturally comes with a hefty dose of biased public opinion. On ‘Girl’, Aitchison weighs up the benefits of having a good friendship for publicity against having a genuine connection, seemingly deciding by the emotional climax of the song that they’re ‘closer to being on the same page’ through this frank confession. On the other hand, in the remix, Lorde appears to simultaneously place the blame on herself and the competitive nature of the music industry: ‘It’s you and me on the coin/the industry loves to spend’. Through this sentiment, Lorde suggests she and Aitchison utilise their contrasting personalities and musical styles to their advantage - as demonstrated by the success of their collaboration. One could definitely argue that this very public ‘working it out on the remix’ is just another example of a PR stunt played out in real time, to an audience raised on popstar feuds, but I would argue it signals genuine growth in the way in which Aitchison approaches friction with an equally mainstream female peer.
Conversely, ‘Ladies’, the eighth track on Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters, directly laments Apple’s inability to emotionally connect with other women. Lines such as ‘The revolving door that keeps/Turning out more and more/Good women like you/Yet another woman, to whom I won’t get through’ refer to the music industry’s preference for younger and younger women, pushing those past a certain age to the sidelines. In ‘Gender, Branding and the Modern Music Industry’, marketing professor Kristin Lieb suggests that ‘there are more artist types and positions available to men, and most of them prioritise music over their bodies’. The concept that female artists are not held to the same standard, with younger and more conventionally attractive musicians being favoured cyclically, could provide an explanation for Apple’s perceived sense of distance between herself and her female peers.
Lieb asserts that ‘age and appearance… are critical throughout a female popular music star’s career’ (p70) and indeed, it seems that the mainstream music industry’s ability to manufacture the ‘ideal’ image of a female popstar is severely alienating towards those who no longer, or never did, fit the mould. Female musicians who reject their role in this lifecycle often find themselves outside of the typical ‘roles’ within it - where a ‘well-established-but-fading’ artist may find secure enough work later in life on the judging panel of a talent show or reality TV, other artists who strive to continue making music on their own terms may struggle to find commercial success once they no longer fit the ‘ideal’ image put forth by the industry at large. In fact, Apple’s famous ‘this world is bullshit’ speech at the 1997 Video Music Awards openly rebuked this unsustainable industry standard, stating that audiences ‘shouldn’t model [their] life on what you think we think is cool and what we’re wearing and what we’re saying and everything. Go with yourself’. Post movements such as #freebritney, a statement condemning a commercially manufactured idea of a pop princess may seem obvious to modern audiences, but at the time was widely derided in the media. Comedian Janeane Garofalo even parodied Apple’s speech, lampooning the latter’s struggle with ARFID: ‘Even though I have an eating disorder and I have somehow sold out to the patriarchy in this culture that says lean is better’. (Zakhri, F, 2020). Apple’s criticism, and the resulting backlash from men and women alike, cements the theme in ‘Ladies’ that the tension between Apple and her peers do not necessarily stem from personal issues, but from walls separating them, built by an industry not designed for women to thrive in unity.
On the third track of Brat, ‘Sympathy is a Knife’, Aitchison takes a much more upfront - and borderline aggressive - stance with her dislike for the song’s female subject. The root of the issue is that Aitchison’s opponent ‘taps [her] insecurities’, a feeling the singer tries to vocalise, only to be called paranoid. Whether or not this is true is left ambiguous, with Aitchison ultimately lamenting her feelings of inadequacy to her female counterpart. She simultaneously takes comfort from, and is disturbed by, the fact that the two are total opposites: in many ways, the idea affirms Aitchison’s confidence as an individual, but (as dealt with in the track ‘I might say something stupid’) isolates her further from her peers. While the subject of 'Sympathy is a Knife' has been oft-debated since its initial release, I think Aitchison makes clear that the problem is less to do with the mystery woman in question, but rather how the music industry has pitted them against each other in the first place. Note that, unlike in ‘Girl, so confusing’, the song’s subject is never described further than her appearances backstage, whereas Aitchison delves more deeply into her own insecurities: for example, ‘Don’t know/Why I wanna buy a gun?/Why I wanna shoot myself?/Volatile at war with my dialogue/I'd say that there was a God if they could stop this’ is an incredibly raw admission of emotional turmoil, and points the blame less at the song’s subject but rather inwardly, at Aitchison’s precarious place in the music world and her inability to articulate it.
Sonically, Fetch the Bolt Cutters and Brat couldn’t be more different. The former is peppered with dolphin sounds, homemade percussion and Apple’s dogs’ barks, while Brat is a glittering, maximalist celebration of 21st century hedonism and its repercussions. However, I can’t help but feel that the two albums are united in their sentiments towards female friendships: Apple and Aitchison undergo transformations in their ideas towards faux competition between women, as well as internalised misogyny. Both artists deal with these problems with wit and cleverly juxtaposed instrumentation, but have shown they are willing to stare down insecurity until it rots away. I think there’s a lot we can learn from Brat and Fetch The Bolt Cutters, independently of one another, but I’ve come to think of them as sisters, united in the face of a world that would like to set them apart.
Note: It says summer because it took me Six Months to finish this. Why ? Who knows honestly hope you like it anyway
References:
Apple, F. (2018) Fiona Apple’s Acceptance Speech at the 1997 Video Music Awards | MTV, YouTube. Available at:
(Accessed: 28 January 2025).
Earl, W. (2024) Taylor Swift praises Charli XCX after ‘sympathy is a knife’ reignited feud rumors: ‘her writing is surreal and inventive’, Variety. Available at: https://variety.com/2024/music/news/taylor-swift-charli-xcx-sympathy-is-a-knife-feud-1236118108/ (Accessed: 28 January 2025).
Lieb, K. (2013) Gender, branding, and the modern music industry: The Social Construction of female popular music stars. New York: Routledge.
McIntyre, A. (no date) X (Formerly Twitter). Available at: https://x.com/theadammcintyre/status/1806536076749578656.
Saponara, M. (2024) A timeline of Nicki Minaj & Megan Thee Stallion’s Friendship-turned-feud, Billboard. Available at: https://www.billboard.com/lists/nicki-minaj-megan-thee-stallion-feud-timeline/ (Accessed: 28 January 2025).
X.com (no date) X (formerly Twitter). Available at: https://x.com/ponderingssss/status/1809596754066579944 (Accessed: 28 January 2025).
Zakhri, F. (2023) Fiona Apple and the art of patience and unflinching defiance, Magdalene.co. Available at: https://magdalene.co/story/fiona-apple-and-the-art-of-patience-and-unflinching-defiance/ (Accessed: 28 January 2025).