2025: Pretrial (Let Her Go Home) - Fiona Apple

They wouldn't let her go home and now there's no more home

May 07, 2025

Fiona Apple has quietly been very busy in the last five years.

Though she hasn’t made many public appearances, she hasn’t toured or played any live shows of any kind, and she hasn’t released any original material since 2020’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters—considered by many fans and critics to be the greatest album of the decade so far—she hasn’t ever stopped working. In the last five years, she has contributed to a fair few tribute albums (Tonight I'll Go Down Swingin': Tribute to Don Heffington, Heart of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young etc), and lent her voice and piano playing to other people’s projects (Bob Dylan, Sharon van Etten, Iron & Wine, The Waterboys among others) and also recorded something for the new The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power soundtrack.

But more so than with any of this music, and probably more importantly, she has been busy volunteering as a court watcher in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Apple started court watching after participating in a campaign called Gasping for Justice, a programme which raised awareness about the conditions in Prince George’s County jail at the start of the pandemic, and continued to volunteer for a couple of years from then on.

“Immediately, it just made sense, even before I understood what it entailed,” she told Jon Blistein and Rolling Stone in early 2023 about the work she’d been doing. “It made sense that, yeah, when people are having their worst day, at their most vulnerable, at the very least, [somebody] should be there with them and be a witness, don’t let them go through it alone, and take a look at what’s going on. Because you don’t know what’s going on inside there, they keep it all secret”. In the course of her volunteering, Apple has witnessed countless hearings that have been the result of unconstitutional stops or arrests or which have seen people loaded with unfairly out-sized bails for petty crimes and a system which has an out-sized effect on women, girls, and, in particular, Black mothers.

Now, with her first new original material since Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Apple has combined her (always-excellent) music and her court-watching activism into the shocking new song Pretrial (Let Her Go Home).

We’re living in and through a time where there is so much to protest against—fascism and far-right nationalism are on the march across the globe; the effects of climate change have been battering the global South whilst the governments from the global North continue to invest in planet killing oil and gas at record rates, there is an ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israel which is being backed, encouraged and funded by the United Kingdom and America among others, including the ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza. We are witnessing the biggest theft and wealth transfer in history being committed by the richest in the world against the poorest, experiencing a worrying and terrifying rise in extreme misogyny and violence against women, and plenty more besides—but there are so few major artists who are doing any sort of protesting. So few public figures who are willing to lend their voice to the voiceless.

Bob Dylan, one of the most iconic historic figures in music as protest, recently asked from the stage on his Rough and Rowdy Ways tour “are these not songs for times like these?”, but what even was the last great protest song? What was the last real statement song put out by someone who had a lot to lose by putting it out? This is America? A Few Words in Defense of Our Country? American Idiot? Born in the U.S.A, maybe? There certainly seems to be a theme amongst them, too, but they’re all broad attacks on the incompetence of the presiding American administrations as a whole. Fiona Apple’s latest is a more targeted, more direct assessment of a specific part of the corrupt American criminal justice system, and it’s shocking.

Apple is singing about a system of structural oppression that is devastating, and the way that she sings is devastating, too. These are very real human stories, and her storytelling is full of that humanity. Her voice is full of that humanity. She is lending her voice to the women that she is singing about and, consequently, she sings with the power of each and every one of them combined. It’s a really distressing, moving and difficult piece of art to process. It’s a hard song to listen to, and a harsh reality to be so bluntly confronted with.

But it’s also a brilliant song, as all the best protest songs need to be to really capture your attention and your thoughts; to make you really feel something and compel you to some kind of action of your own. Think of how much less of an impact Blowin’ in the Wind would have if not for it’s open, thought provoking simplicity. The same goes for Pretrial (Let Her Go Home). Think about how much less of an impact What’s Goin’ On could have had if not for it’s captivating music and melody. The same goes for Pretrial (Let Her Go Home). Think of how much less impactful Move On Up would have been without that great and intoxicating instrumental hook. The same goes for Pretrial (Let Her Go Home).

Think about If I Can Dream and No More Auction Block, We Shall Overcome and Strange Fruit. Think about A Change is Gonna Come and Sit Down, Servant. Think about Pa’Lante by Hurray for the Riff Raff and Rednecks by Randy Newman. Respect Yourself and all the rest. This song can stand up proudly among them as a song with guts, a song with something to say and a whole group of people who needed someone to say something for them.

Here’s what Fiona Apple herself said about it:

I was a court watcher for over two years. In that time, I took notes on thousands of bond hearings. Time and time again, I listened as people were taken away and put in jail, for no other reason than that they couldn’t afford to buy their way free. It was particularly hard to hear mothers and caretakers get taken away from the people who depend on them. For the past five years, I have been volunteering with the Free Black Mamas DMV bailout, and I have been lucky to be able to witness the stories of women who fought for and won their freedom with the tireless and loving support of the leadership. I hope that this song, and the images shared with me, can help to show what is at stake when someone is kept in pretrial detention. I give this song in friendship and respect to all who have experienced the pain of pretrial detention and to the women of the group’s leadership who have taught me so much and whom I truly love.

Something else that great protest songs have in common is their malleability and ability to apply to more than one cause or time. The way they can connect across class lines, colour lines, gender lines or any other kind of boundary which is more often used for division than for connectivity. This Land is Your Land, Masters of War, Sam Stone and Fuck Tha Police are all as applicable, relatable and accessible today and to our times as to the ones they were written for.

And, even on the day of its release, Pretrial (Let Her Go Home) can connect on a secondary level to another injustice which is being carried out every day under the current administration. Though this song specifically speaks to the way that women, and particularly women of colour, are unfairly detained by the price of bail and the additional costs to the family that comes with it by the judicial system, it has arrived in the middle of an American crisis which is seeing ICE agents illegally, or at best, dubiously, detain and deport both foreign nationals and United States citizens, where again women of colour are being disproportionately affected and families torn apart (Apple’s line “wouldn't let her go home and now there's no more home” is a particularly upsetting image and poignant lyric in both readings).

The main difference is that in one instance, the women should be allowed to go home and in the other, they should be allowed to stay. In both contexts, though, the lyric that best states its case with the angry, exasperated and just question which Apple asks towards the end of her closing argument is, “what the fuck's the point of all the fucking hell he put her through?”

Donations to help those affected by pretrial detention pay their bail and reunite them with their families can be made here. You can also find out more about the Free Black Mamas DMV here. For those of you in America, you can register here to volunteer for court watching to ensure fair rulings. In Britain, and specifically in London, more information can be found here.