Family can be a sensitive subject for a lot of people. While family serves as a huge aspect for a lot of people’s lives, sometimes there is a string of intergenerational trauma that plagues your family for a long time. This feeling can really stunt people’s growth and exploration. This topic is discussed throughout Charli xcx’s song “Apple.”
The opening line of the song starts with “I guess the Apple don’t fall far from the tree/‘Cause I’ve been looking at you so long, now I only see me.” This line sets the tone of the song immediately giving listeners this sense of struggle in forming one’s own person amidst pressures from family members.
The singer spends the first half of the song trying to explain to her family how she wants to grow and express herself differently but they will not listen to her saying. Charli xcx sings, “I guess the apple could turn yellow or green” and “I can’t help but get so angry/you don’t listen to me.” She wants to be different from her family and she is trying to explain it to them, but they refuse to listen to her no matter how hard she tries.
During the bridge of the song, the singer begins to finally explain how hurt she has been by her family saying, “I think the apple rotten right to the core.” No matter how she sees her family, she can only see traumatic things from even the past generations. She keeps digging deeper and deeper into her family’s past seeing darker things but is finally able to see the dark and morph out of it using driving as a metaphor for escape saying, “what I find is kinda scary/makes me just wanna drive.”
The meaning behind the song is something that is important to discuss. Additionally, I enjoy the electro pop sound that accompanies the song. I feel like it brings a life to an overall serious song.
“Apple” was released on June 7, 2024, with Charli xcx’s sixth studio album, “Brat.” Charli xcx is an English singer-songwriter who has been making music since 2013. Although she has had a couple big hits, “Brat” really swept the internet with the fad of “Brat summer” being all over social media throughout the summer of 2024.
You can listen to “Apple” on all streaming platforms.