Fiona Apple unveils cover of Neil Young’s ‘Heart of Gold’
She may not have released any new original material for coming on five years now, but Fiona Apple has been a busy woman in the last few months, nonetheless. At the end of last year she contributed a cover of ‘Lately’ to the Tonight I’ll Go Down Swingin’: A Tribute To Don Heffington collection, and, more recently, she lent her towering and haunting vocals to the song ‘Letters From an Unknown Girlfriend’ on The Waterboys’ latest record Life, Death and Dennis Hopper.
Now, Apple has contributed the titular cover of the Neil Young classic ‘Heart of Gold’ to the Shakey charity tribute record Heart of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young.
Opening with a delicate piano played by Dave Palmer, who deftly plucks out the melody so memorably supplied by Young’s harmonica on the original, Apple sings the song relatively straight and without too much invention. Her simple approach lays bare the equal simplicity of the lyrics, but it also lays bare the deep and heartfelt nature of them. In essence, the opening couplet here, “I want to live, I want to give” has been the foundation stone on which so much of her own music has been built.
For someone who burst onto the scene as a precocious teen, and whose youth was commented on at every turn by the press and critics of the time, it is notable that there is now a slight crack in Apple’s voice as she repeats the phrase “and I’m getting old” throughout the song, and that her voice has dropped a little deeper over the decades since her debut. It only adds so much more weight to the lyrics and to the power of hearing them sung here by Apple.
On first listen, it feels like a fairly straightforward run through the song, but with each repeated play, a new layer of depth and emotion sweeps over you. This is a quietly devastating performance of a quietly devastating song. Apple’s heavy vibrato can imply that she may feel shaken in her search of a heart of gold, and in her ageing, but the strength and power in her conviction and her delivery tells us that as much as her voice may waver, she never will.
At the end of the first chorus is a gorgeous string instrumental break, which sweeps through the ages between Young’s original and Apple’s update. The highlight of the entire track comes towards the climax, where Apple’s vocals are layered up and the strings return, powerfully building to an emotional peak and crescendo that leaves you certain that her search will not have been in vain.
Though Apple is no stranger to cover songs—despite being the best songwriter of her generation, some of her own finest performances have come when singing songs written by other people—this is her first public recording of a Neil Young number, though she did previously join a jam between Eddie Vedder, Glen Hansard, Ben Garza and plenty others besides on Young’s ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ at the Ohana Festival in 2017, where she shared a mic with Hansard when providing backing vocals on the chorus.
Incidentally, Vedder also appears on the Heart of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young album, this time singing ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’. Other contributions come from Courtney Barnett, who supplied a beautiful take on the 1978 deep cut ‘Lotta Love’, whilst elsewhere there are performances from Brandi Carlisle (a gorgeous cover of ‘Philadelphia’), Sharon Van Etten (‘Here We Are In The Years’), The Lumineers (‘Sugar Mountain’), Steve Earle (‘Long May You Run’) and more. All proceeds from the album will go to The Bridge School in Hillsborough, California, which Young has been a long-time supporter of.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out New Music Newsletter
All the latest New Music from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.