Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield on Why Fiona Apple Is Her ‘Icon & Influence’

Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee recalls hearing Fiona Apple for the first time in a dance class. “We did a dance to the song ‘Paper Bag,’ and I remember immediately being like, ‘I’ve never heard anything like this,’ and immediately just clocked it,” she told Rolling Stone for our Icons & Influences video series. “I was like, ‘This person, Fiona Apple, is really interesting.’”

“What I think is so special about her is there’s this stereotype of women’s emotions — the idea of the hysterical woman — and that has been weaponized against women forever from the beginning of time,” Crutchfield continued. “And she takes that idea and she turns it into this superpower. She takes this thing used as a negative against women and just flips it completely on its head and makes it powerful and very relatable”.

Crutchfield’s favorite Apple album is The Idler Wheel but notes that 2020’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters is a huge achievement for the songwriter. “It was so cool and triumphant to watch her have such an amazing year,” she said, “and be so recognized and put on the pedestal that I think she deserves to be on.”

“She has a long-standing career where she’s just chipped away and chipped away and gotten closer and closer and closer to whatever her truth is,” Crutchfield added. “And I think her next record will probably be her best yet. That’s the kind of career I want to have. So I really look up to that and think that her history is still being written.”

Watch more videos in the series — including Kacey Musgraves, Brittany Howard, Haim, and Brandi Carlile — on Rolling Stone‘s YouTube page.