Fiona Apple Reveals How Her Assault Influenced This Track On New Album 'Fetch the Bolt Cutters'

Fiona Apple’s latest album “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” touches on some heavy topics including things she experienced as a child, and the singer opened up about what inspired her track “Relay.”

“I had been assaulted when I was about 12 or 13, and immediately questions of guilt and innocence and retaliation and acceptance and peace and war — all of these things, it was all living within me all of a sudden,” she recalled in an interview with Democracy Now!.

In the song, the 42-year-old sings “Evil is a relay sport, when the one you burn turns to pass the torch.” Apple wrote this line at the age of 15, it serves as a reflection of her thoughts at the time regarding the assault and her perpetrator.

“So, the first thing I was thinking was, ‘Well, something must have been done to him,’” she explained. “And so, that was just my thought about him, that somebody had burned him, and he saw somebody — me — who looked vulnerable enough to burn, and maybe he thought that would take the burn off of him. But it doesn’t. It just passes it on. And he keeps it, and I got it, too. So, that was my thought then, and that was a big subject.”

During the interview, Apple also revealed why she decided to release the album amid the coronavirus pandemic despite her label wanting her to wait until October.

“I knew that it would help people who are fans of mine because they’re just waiting around for so many years,” she said. “So it’s like ‘Oh yeah, the new record’s here. Good. That’s something for me to do for a couple of days.’ But I’ve heard that it’s actually making people feel free and happy. It might be helping people feel alive or feel their anger or feel creative. And that’s the best thing that I could hope for. That and also trying to tie my songs in with things that I believe in.”

As previously reported, this is the singer’s first album in eight years. During an interview with Vulture, she revealed that she hopes to unite women with her latest project.

“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.”

“Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is available to stream on all major platforms.