ChapterFourteen
Private Message | EchoZone Internal Chat
From: StringTheory27
To: DeadStrings
Date: May 1st, 1997 5:58 PM
Subject: You Want Songs?I Want Fire.
You knowwhat I’m tired of?
Being told that women with pianos are “emotional.”
That we’re “too much” when we write about things that actually happened.
We sing about heartbreak, trauma, shame, power, and, God forbid, desire—and suddenly it’s “indulgent” or “confessional” like we’re bleeding for sport.
So here.Here’s your playlist for the day.But please be assured that it isn’t for crying—or sulking.
This is a girl power trip through the wreckage—fuel-injected rage and clarity.
These aren’t sad songs.
They’re songs that take sadness and weld it into something alive with rage.Into a weapon to fight against injustice and discrimination.
“Sleep to Dream”—Fiona Apple
Let’s start with a piano that sounds like it’s dragging chains across your ribs.She doesn’t ask to be heard—she demands it because it’s her right.
Her mind, body, and voice can’t be stifled by anyone’s deviant ways.
Tell me that’s not the anthem of surviving every smug bastard who thought being a wolf wearing a sheep’s skin was the same as being kind.
“Crucify”—Tori Amos
This one burns.It’s rage dressed in soft lyrics.
It’s about shame, about the grind of trying to be palatable when every part of you wants to scream.It’s the cost of being “good” just to make other people feel comfortable.To get the approval and love you’ve been wanting since you were told only good girls will get it.(All lies, by the way, you don’t get shit no matter what you do.)
This song is about sitting quiet, sitting still, swallowing your voice because you were taught that survival came with silence.
And still they wanted more.They demanded everything.Every single drop of her in exchange of nothing.
She sings like someone done apologizing for existing.There’s no fragility in it—just the exhaustion of living obediently while the world keeps carving pieces off of you.
And that piano?
That piano isn’t background—it’s an uprising.
It doesn’t accompany.It interrupts.
It’s confrontation in every chord, with hands slamming down truth that no one asked for—but needed to hear anyway.
This isn’t just a song.It’s a reckoning.
And if it makes you uncomfortable, good.
