“I’m the life of the party, I’m always smiling. On the surface, I’m as happy as can be.”
You all know the people “Apple Pie” (off The Bastard Fairies’ Memento Mori) is talking about: they seem upbeat and cheerful (much like this song), but the reality is that they’re fairly shallow, and avoid dealing with their emotions, or anything too heavy or serious. It describes an individual who is shallow by choice. The mood and melody of the song encourages this image, with a relatively simple tune running through it, with only the chorus having more complexity and layers: for most of the song, it is simply a synth and lo-fi vocals. With each cycle through the chorus, however, they add more and more instruments, until the final chorus is a diverse cacophany of sounds that works well in a sonic fashion. This ties really well into the metaphor of the song, since you never run into these sorts of people alone.
I like this song, for several reasons. First and foremost, it’s a catchy tune, with a simple rhythm and lyrics that are easy to sing along to — it’s easy to end up nodding your head with the beat or even singing along. In particular when I was first introduced to this song via KEXP, I was dealing with several individuals that I found I was immediately identifying with the song: not bad people, but emotionally shallow, who’d rather sweep things under the rug than address the issues at hand. This gave it enough weight that I ended up tracking down the band online, where I discovered that they were offering their entire album available for download, free (links below). I’d definitely recommend looking them up, and giving the album a few listens, to see if it’s something you might like: especially for the price, it’s worth your time.