Fiona Apple is a court-watcher. She spent a few years monitoring bail hearings in publicly accessible courtrooms, documenting the soul-grinding legal grind that faces some of the American people who really have the deck stacked against them. In the past, Apple has scored and narrated a PSA about court-watching, and she recently wrote a new song about the things that she saw while court-watching. It's Apple's first fully original song in nearly five years, and it's the kind of single-issue song that aims to get people to understand an issue that doesn't get enough attention.
Fiona Apple's new single "Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)" is her first fully original track since she and David Lucky co-wrote "New York Doesn't Like Your Face" for the Apple TV+ series Central Park, which in turn came just after her triumphant album Fetch The Bolt Cutters. We've posted her singing a dozen other people's songs over the past few years, but this is the first in a while that she's actually written. On "Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)," Apple sings about a woman being locked up on a trumped-up charge, unable to make bail. She watches her life fall apart while she's in jail, and when she gets out after her charges are dropped, she can't go home anymore because her home is gone. Apple sings about these trials with raw empathy, telling that story over rippling percussion that prevents the song from ever marinating in its sadness.
Zealous founder Scott Hechinger filmed the "Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)" video, which uses home footage of women who have been detained before trial. (The vertical video on the Let Her Go Home website is from a few years ago.) The clip was created in support of the Free Black Mamas DMV initiative. Here's what Fiona Apple says about the song and the cause behind it:
I was a court watcher for over two years. In that time, I took notes on thousands of bond hearings. Time and time again, I listened as people were taken away and put in jail, for no other reason than that they couldn’t afford to buy their way free. It was particularly hard to hear mothers and caretakers get taken away from the people who depend on them. For the past five years, I have been volunteering with the Free Black Mamas DMV bailout, and I have been lucky to be able to witness the stories of women who fought for and won their freedom with the tireless and loving support of the leadership. I hope that this song, and the images shared with me, can help to show what is at stake when someone is kept in pretrial detention. I give this song in friendship and respect to all who have experienced the pain of pretrial detention and to the women of the group’s leadership who have taught me so much and whom I truly love.
"Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)" was recorded with Bolt Cutters collaborators Sebastian Steinberg, David Garza, and Amy Aileen Wood (who co-produced the track with Apple).
Check it out below.
You can find out more about the Let Her Go Home initiative here.
