Fiona Apple has decided to name her new album ‘The Idler Wheel is wiser than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords will serve you more than Ropes will ever do’.
The art of the album title: get it right, and a mediocre LP becomes a talking point. Get it wrong, and it can neuter something you’ve spent 18 months building.
Fiona Apple likes to stand out. Finishing her new album, the American songwriter opted for something grand, something memorable. So she has decided to name it: ‘The Idler Wheel is wiser than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords will serve you more than Ropes will ever do’.
Of course, the songwriter is no stranger to such gestures. Way back in 1999, Fiona Apple opted to use an eight line poem as her album title:
When the pawn hits the conflicts he thinks like a king
What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight
And he’ll win the whole thing ‘fore he enters the ring
There’s no body to batter when your mind is your might
So when you go solo, you hold your own hand
And remember that depth is the greatest of heights
And if you know where you stand, then you know where to land
And if you fall it won’t matter, cause you’ll know that you’re right
The longest album title ever? Well, it was at the time. Since then, though, Chumbawumba have released ‘The Boy Bands Have Won…’ which contains some 865 letters of text. Then there’s Soulwax, who released a remix compilation in 2007 named…
“Most of the remixes we’ve made for other people over the years except for the one for Einstürzende Neubauten because we lost it and a few we didn’t think sounded good enough or just didn’t fit in length-wise, but including some that are hard to find because either people forgot about them or simply because they haven’t been released yet, a few we really love, one we think is just ok, some we did for free, some we did for money, some for ourselves without permission and some for friends as swaps but never on time and always at our studio in Ghent.”
Fiona Apple is to release ‘The Idler Wheel…’ in June.
