Fiona Apple Opens Up About Her Relationship With Her Exes And The Women She Crossed

In “Fetch the Bolt Cutters,” Fiona Apple aims to unite women and condemn the idea of men coming in between that bond. However, the singer recently revealed that she maintains a profound bond with a number of her exes, as well.

Apple told Vulture that she is currently single, but she still communicates with her last boyfriends, Jamie, Johnathan Ames, and her ex-husband.

“I just heard from Jamie today, and I heard from Jonathan two days ago,” she said at the time of the interview. “My ex-husband, Lionel Deluy, is a very good friend of mine too. He’s lovely. I was married very briefly to Lionel.”

The “Criminal” artist decided to focus her first album in eight years on her relationships with women because those have been her hardest. In the song “Shameika,” she discusses her experiences with middle school bullies.

“My middle-school experience is still so important to me. Mainly because that’s where my relationship to women started getting [expletive] up,” she explained. “Boys can be mean but it’s just kind of stupid mean. I’m not traumatized by boys bullying me. I’m more traumatized by girls rolling their eyes at me. I got silenced a lot. I silenced myself because I was afraid of the other girls saying I wasn’t cool.”

She also opened up about her experience with messing with taken men and explored why she feels she’d done it.

“One thing I think I didn’t look at enough when it comes to myself, is why I ever participated in a flirtation or even started a physical relationship with someone when I knew they had a girlfriend,” Apple explained. “I think about it now, and both times I was privately in awe of the other woman...But I’ve never stopped being disgusted by the memories, and I wonder if that’s because I never apologized to the women...I am so sorry for my selfishness, but that’s not enough. I have to understand it, and I don’t yet.”

Furthermore, Apple brought up how women often blame the other woman and not their spouse.

“I remember my grandmother used to talk about my grandfather and his mistress,” she recalled. “And his mistress actually was his wife for the rest of his life. They were married for 50 years. But to her, she was always mad at this mistress. And it was always like, ‘Man, she didn’t do it. Our grandfather did it. Your husband cheated on you. She just fell in love with some guy. Then they were together forever afterwards and had a family. Be mad at the right person, don’t feel mad at the wrong person.’”

These memories, as well as her own experiences, are what heavily influenced her latest album.

“Later on in life, I’m with a guy. I found out, he’s seeing some other woman. I meet that other woman — I’m nice to that other woman. She didn’t do it. She didn’t cheat on me,” Apple rationed. “So, this album is a lot of not letting men pit us against each other or keep us separate from each other so they can control the message.”