'Criminal' by Fiona Apple and The Feminine Dilemma
On the most feminine song ever written.
In the 1990s, music videos were very important. Music was very important. It isn’t as important anymore. Music doesn’t impact culture the way it used to, nor does it have much substance.
During the peak of music video culture, your TV channel choices were MTV, VH1, and BET. MTV was a blend of music videos, shows about music, and reality TV shows; BET was for black people; and VH1 was strictly music videos for a time. When a new album was about to be released, usually the hit single would be released and paired with a music video. There was a lot of pressure for the music video to capture the nature of the song and mirror it. This isn’t easy; the best music video producers were well-known at the time. A music video and the song itself are two different art forms. The music video for ‘Criminal’ by Fiona Apple captures the nature of the song perfectly.
‘Criminal’ is still relevant 26 years later. Written by an 18-year-old from NYC who was raped at 12 years old, it was decades ahead of its time. The song and lyrics are hers; there wasn’t a songwriting team behind it like there is for artists now.
The ‘Criminal’ Music Video
The music video is categorically sexy. It’s dark, it’s messy, it feels like a manifesto. The heroin chic is captured here, and you may need to know a little bit about Fiona to understand why. She has been diagnosed with OCD, depression and complex PTSD. She was likely heavily medicated at the time. The aura of the video is a girl who is strung out and highly reflective while everyone else is asleep. It’s as if she froze time to tell you about her dilemma.
