‘River, Stay Away From My Door’: The making of Fiona Apple’s greatest cover
Fiona Apple is arguably the greatest songwriter of her generation, but she is also one of the finest interpreters of other people’s songs.
Her contributions to the 2009 tribute album The Best Is Yet to Come: The Songs of Cy Coleman are easily the standout performances on the record. Fiona Apple imbues both ‘Why Try to Change Me Now?’ and ‘I Walk a Little Faster’ with remarkable sensitivity and a gentle, shimmering power. Her live rendition of ‘I Walk a Little Faster’ at the album’s tribute show was even more stirring, showcasing the timeless depth, natural beauty, and delicate yet powerful fragility of her voice.
Elsewhere, she did the unthinkable and improved on the original with her cover of The Beatles’ ‘Across the Universe’, which featured in Gary Ross’ weird and wonderful 1998 romantic fantasy film Pleasantville. Both ‘Across the Universe’ and Apple’s other cover from the film, ‘Please Send Me Someone to Love’, stand up alongside the recordings used in the movie by legends like Gene Vincent, The Dave Brubeck Five, Etta James and Elvis Presley, as well as Randy Newman’s excellent Aaron Copland-esque Americana score.
The most recent recording that Apple has released was a cover, as she contributed a rendition of ‘Lately’ to the 2024 Tonight I’ll Go Down Swingin’: A Tribute to Don Heffington album. She is no stranger to such projects, having also sung ‘Every Day’ with Jon Brion for the 2011 Rave On Buddy Holly album, ‘Love More’ for the Sharon Van Etten Epic Ten project, as well as the Cy Coleman covers and a handful of others
She creates covers for more than just tribute albums. In 2019, Apple recorded a new take on The Waterboys’ classic, ‘The Whole of the Moon’, for the US TV drama The Affair. And in concert, Apple has covered a wide range of songs and artists, too, from Dylan’s ‘Tombstone Blues’ and Wings’ ‘Let Me Roll It’ to Bill Withers’ funk-infused classic ‘Use Me’, Conway Twitty’s ‘It’s Only Make Believe’, Irving Kaufman’s haunting ‘You Belong to Me’ and many more, besides.
Frequently collaborating with producer and multi-instrumentalist Jon Brion, two of her greatest covers – and two of her greatest vocal performances in general – came in live performances with him in the late 1990s. Around the time she was playing in support of her first masterpiece, When the Pawn…, Apple covered the 1918 Turner Layton and Henry Creamer song ‘After You’ve Gone’ with Brion backing her up on a deft and jazzy acoustic guitar.
But their version of the Mort Dixon and Harry M Woods standard ‘River, Stay Away From My Door’ is arguably her greatest ever cover performance.
Singing at Largo at the Coronet, which she immortalised in a song on her 2012 album The Idler Wheel…, Apple is once again backed on acoustic guitar by Brion. While ‘When You’re Gone’ is a mostly restrained performance that occasionally bubbles over into more energetic and enervating moments, ‘River, Stay Away From My Door’ is pure power.
Apple reaches deep down inside herself, and right through the ages, to pull out a guttural and mighty vocal performance. It is so of the earth and yet so otherworldly. It is so deeply spiritually moving; her performance is transcendent, haunting and wickedly powerful. When she erupts into the chorus, she sounds like she is channelling the spirit of the blueswomen and southern shouters from the Mississippi delta from one-hundred years previously. She is singing with all of their voices, with the full range of her own voice, and pleading on all of our behalves for the river to stay away from our doors.
Fiona Apple sings at the crossroads of blues and jazz, drawing from two of America’s greatest musical traditions. She channels the spirit, power, and understanding of the great practitioners of both genres while delivering a performance that is uniquely her own, in her unmistakable voice. As the song reaches its conclusion, she effortlessly glides into her higher register for the final lines, creating an effect that is just as mesmerising and moving as the louder, more confrontational energy of the chorus.
Since this song was first written in 1931, it has been sung and performed by countless artists, but no one has ever done it better than Fiona Apple did that night in Largo in 1999.
