When to Dull Tool Hits the Idler Wheel It Thinks Like a Driver of the Apatow
November 19, 2012 12:01 PM   Subscribe

Dull Tool is the new track from Fiona Apple written for This is 40, the follow up to Judd Apatow's Knocked Up. The song is already being touted as a potential Oscar winner.
posted by Panjandrum (27 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh man Fiona Apple doing a "Our relationship is fucking falling apart" song? I'm SOLD.
posted by The Whelk at 12:05 PM on November 19, 2012 [6 favorites]


Only because Schonberg and Boublil didn't write a new song for Les Miserables!
posted by inturnaround at 12:06 PM on November 19, 2012


That song seems so amazingly boring compared to her recent album. So, I guess it has a chance at an Oscar.
posted by mannequito at 12:12 PM on November 19, 2012


Fiona Apple's recent WTF interview was great.
posted by Beardman at 12:13 PM on November 19, 2012 [3 favorites]


As for the movie, I kinda wish Albert Brooks, Lena Dunham, John Lithgow, and Megan Fox had just gone off and done their own movie together.
posted by Beardman at 12:15 PM on November 19, 2012 [1 favorite]


Fiona Apple's recent WTF interview was great.

It really was, as was a lot of the more in-depth press around that album. This Vulture piece is also outstanding.
posted by yellowbinder at 12:19 PM on November 19, 2012


Song touted as potential Oscar winner in November = won't even get nominated.
posted by thecjm at 12:20 PM on November 19, 2012 [1 favorite]


You do realize that Oscar voters are mostly blue hairs.
posted by spock at 12:38 PM on November 19, 2012


Love Fiona, quite like this song, am dying to see how the Oscars will handle "You don't fuck when you fuck."
posted by maudlin at 12:42 PM on November 19, 2012


Obsessive Fiona fan here thinks the song is great, but the film fan in me knows that it is no Oscar material -- which favors soaring ballads and the like. The winners tend not to even be memorable a year or two later. "Colors in the Wind"? You're kidding me. (And by the way, Disney has cleaned up in the category for years now.) Other than "Lose Yourself" (a special case, as it was a biopic of a currently popular musician), and the maudlin classic "My Heart Will Go On", you have to go back to "Things Have Changed" for an actual legitimate standalone song from a non-Broadway musician. The last one that combined both Oscar style and legitimate song-ness, if you ask me, was "Let the River Run" -- which seems to have been the tail-end of a wave of pop winners.
posted by dhartung at 12:46 PM on November 19, 2012 [4 favorites]


the maudlin classic "My Heart Will Go On"

You know, you do your best over the past decade to post about musicians you love, like Holger Czukay and Billy Bragg and Philip Glass. But you post ONE goddamn thing about Celine Dion ...
posted by maudlin at 12:56 PM on November 19, 2012 [4 favorites]


Other than "Lose Yourself" (a special case, as it was a biopic of a currently popular musician), and the maudlin classic "My Heart Will Go On", you have to go back to "Things Have Changed" for an actual legitimate standalone song from a non-Broadway musician.

"Falling Slowly" was a pretty good winner.
posted by gyc at 1:32 PM on November 19, 2012 [3 favorites]


Fiona Apple's recent WTF interview was great.

It starts at 14:11 minutes in... now if only I could mute the interviewers voice.
posted by Shit Parade at 1:34 PM on November 19, 2012


That song seems so amazingly boring compared to her recent album.

Removing the oxymoronic "amazingly" and I'm mostly with you. I've been listening to Idleer a LOT and this song sounds like a B-side or a "didn't make the cut." I've seen stranger things, but I'd be very surprised if this is even nominated for an Oscar.

Compare to Periphery, Daredevil, or Werewolf. actually, there is no comparison, imo. (i'll try it again later ...)

Also, that's not a sequel, that's a spinoff.
posted by mrgrimm at 1:53 PM on November 19, 2012


I like it, and it's making me go back and listen to the new Fiona album. Agreed that it'll never win an Oscar though.
posted by immlass at 1:56 PM on November 19, 2012


In any event, glad to see her get the positive publicity her work so deserves.
posted by likeatoaster at 2:23 PM on November 19, 2012


Only because Schonberg and Boublil didn't write a new song for Les Miserables!

Well, actually...
posted by Bluecoat93 at 2:50 PM on November 19, 2012


Worth mentioning it sounds much better played from a decent source (i.e. not YouTube) as does her wonderful recent album: "The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do" (Deluxe CD)
posted by Lanark at 3:39 PM on November 19, 2012


Sorry, no song with the lyrics "you don't fuck when you fuck" is going to win an Oscar.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 3:45 PM on November 19, 2012


^ Yes, also it goes without saying that anything 'tipped to win' probably won't.

anyway, heres Fiona with Sara Watkins and Sean Watkins absolutely killing an Everly Brothers song.
posted by Lanark at 3:48 PM on November 19, 2012 [1 favorite]


I like Fiona Apple very much and I need to redouble my efforts to remind myself to actually listen to more of her songs than the few I've already have.
posted by Anything at 4:30 PM on November 19, 2012 [1 favorite]


heres Fiona with Sara Watkins and Sean Watkins absolutely killing an Everly Brothers song

And Wayne Coyne on drums!
posted by Beardman at 5:50 PM on November 19, 2012


Sorry, no song with the lyrics "you don't fuck when you fuck" is going to win an Oscar.

From Three 6 Mafia's Oscar winning song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" --
Wait I got a snow bunny, and a black girl too
You pay the right price and they'll both do you
That's the way the game goes, gotta keep it strictly pimpin'
Gotta keep my hustle tight, makin' change off these women, yeah

You know it's hard out here for a pimp
When he tryin' to get this money for the rent
For the Cadillacs and gas money spent
Because a whole lot of bitches talkin' shit
posted by sallybrown at 6:31 PM on November 19, 2012 [4 favorites]


Repetitive piano loop, quirky rhythm arrangement, meaningless lyrics -- yup, it's a Fiona Apple song.
posted by bardic at 9:17 PM on November 19, 2012


meaningless
:|
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 10:14 PM on November 19, 2012


I think they are far from meaningless but maybe hard to hear on YouTubes compressed stream, heres an attempt at a transcript:

Come on out, come on out,
Where’d you go, where’d you go?
I don’t mean to play here

Figure out, figure out
What you know, what you know
Figure out how to say it clear
Cause you’re more likely to get cut with a dull tool, than a sharp one
You, you stuck around,
You stuck around,
You stuck around,
Until you got me
Then, then you drop me

Chorus:
You, You don’t kiss when you kiss,
You don’t fuck when you fuck
You don’t say what you mean, you don’t talk not enough
No pulse in your impulse, celebration's impossible.

You forgot the difference between equanimity and passivity
You forgot you have to try, you have to try, you have to try
You forgot that glorious feeling that you get when you get the truth
So tell that girl you don’t love her
And if you do, tell her two times
Cause you’re more likely to get cut with a dull tool, than a sharp one

Chorus:
You,You don’t kiss when you kiss,
You don’t fuck when you fuck
You don’t say what you mean, you don’t talk not(/loud?) enough
No pulse in your impulse, celebration's impossible.

when...You don’t kiss when you kiss,
You don’t fuck when you fuck
You don’t say what you mean, you don’t talk not enough
No pulse in your impulse, celebration's impossible.

You don’t kiss when you kiss,
You don’t fuck when you fuck
You don’t say what you mean, you don’t talk not enough
No pulse in your impulse, celebration's impossible.

When
You don’t kiss when you kiss,
You don’t fuck when you fuck
You don’t say what you mean, you don’t talk not enough
No pulse in your impulse, celebration's impossible.
Celebration’s impossible
Celebration’s impossible
Celebration’s impossible
Celebration’s impossible
posted by Lanark at 1:25 AM on November 20, 2012 [1 favorite]


Fiona just cancelled her South American tour and posted this handwritten letter on Facebook:
It's 6pm on Friday,and I'm writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet.
I am writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later.
Here's the thing.
I have a dog Janet, and she's been ill for almost two years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She's almost 14 years old now.I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then ,an adult officially - and she was my child.
She is a pitbull, and was found in Echo Park, with a rope around her neck, and bites all over her ears and face.
She was the one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders.
She's almost 14 and I've never seen her start a fight ,or bite, or even growl, so I can understand why they chose her for that awful role. She's a pacifist.
Janet has been the most consistent relationship of my adult life, and that is just a fact.
We've lived in numerous houses, and jumped a few make shift families, but it's always really been the two of us.
She slept in bed with me, her head on the pillow, and she accepted my hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head.
She was under the piano when I wrote songs, barked any time I tried to record anything, and she was in the studio with me all the time we recorded the last album.
The last time I came back from tour, she was spry as ever, and she's used to me being gone for a few weeks every 6 or 7 years.
She has Addison's Disease, which makes it dangerous for her to travel since she needs regular injections of Cortisol, because she reacts to stress and to excitement without the physiological tools which keep most of us from literally panicking to death.
Despite all of this, she’s effortlessly joyful and playful, and only stopped acting like a puppy about 3 years ago.
She's my best friend and my mother and my daughter, my benefactor, and she's the one who taught me what love is.
I can't come to South America. Not now.
When I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference.
She doesn't even want to go for walks anymore.
I know that she's not sad about aging or dying. Animals have a survival instinct, but a sense of mortality and vanity, they do not. That’s why they are so much more present than people.
But I know that she is coming close to point where she will stop being a dog, and instead, be part of everything. She’ll be in the wind, and in the soil, and the snow, and in me, wherever I go.
I just can't leave her now, please understand.
If I go away again, I’m afraid she'll die and I won't have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out.
Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes to pick which socks to wear to bed.
But this decision is instant.
These are the choices we make, which define us.
I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love and friendship.
I am the woman who stays home and bakes Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend.
And helps her be comfortable, and comforted, and safe, and important.
Many of us these days, we dread the death of a loved one. It is the ugly truth of Life, that keeps us feeling terrified and alone.
I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time.
I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her, and of her life and of my love for her, in the last moments.
I need to do my damnedest to be there for that.
Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I've ever known.
When she dies.
So I am staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and reveling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel.
And I am asking for your blessing.

I'll be seeing you.
Love, Fiona
posted by Lanark at 12:23 PM on November 20, 2012 [2 favorites]


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