It shouldn't work. On paper, the idea of a 90s art-pop icon covering a whimsical song from a 1971 children's movie feels like a cynical marketing ploy. It feels like something a corporate boardroom dreamed up to sell luxury SUVs. Actually, that is exactly how Fiona Apple Pure Imagination started—as a 2013 commission for a Chipotle animated short titled The Scarecrow. But what Apple did with the track was anything but corporate.
She turned a song about optimism into a dirge.
Most of us grew up with Gene Wilder’s version from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Wilder’s performance is legendary because of its balance; it’s inviting yet slightly mischievous, a shimmering invitation to a world where rules don't apply. It’s light. It’s airy. Fiona Apple took that air and sucked it out of the room. She replaced the flute-heavy, orchestral wonder of the original with a sparse, haunting arrangement that sounds like it was recorded in a basement at 3:00 AM.
Honestly, it’s creepy. And that’s why it’s brilliant.
The Haunting Mechanics of the Fiona Apple Pure Imagination Cover
If you listen closely to the production, handled by Blake Mills, you’ll notice there isn’t a traditional beat. It’s built on atmosphere. The track opens with these dissonant, creaky sounds—industrial groans that mirror the visuals of the "Scarecrow" short, which depicted a dystopian factory farm. Apple’s voice enters low, almost a whisper. She isn't singing to a group of excited children. She sounds like she’s singing to herself in a mirror, trying to convince herself that a world of "pure imagination" actually exists.
It’s about the subtext.
🔗 Read more: Why Movies Directed by Sam Raimi Still Feel Different
When Wilder sings "If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it," it feels like a promise. When Apple sings it, it sounds like a warning. Her signature vocal grit—that slight rasp that has defined her career since Tidal—grinds against the melody.
Why the tempo change matters
Most covers try to stay within the rhythmic ballpark of the original. Apple slowed it down to a crawl. By stretching the vowels and leaving huge gaps of silence between phrases, she forces the listener to sit with the lyrics. "Want to change the world? There's nothing to it." In the original, that's an empowering sentiment. In this version, it feels sarcastic or perhaps deeply cynical about how hard it actually is to fix a broken system.
Breaking Down the 2013 Context
You have to remember where Fiona Apple was in her career back in 2013. She had just released The Idler Wheel... a year prior, an album defined by its skeletal percussion and raw, unpolished emotionality. She wasn't in the business of making "pretty" music.
Chipotle’s "The Scarecrow" campaign was meant to highlight the horrors of industrial food production. The animation shows a world of "all-natural" branding hiding a dark, mechanical reality. Fiona Apple Pure Imagination was the perfect sonic marriage for that visual. The song represents the "imagination" or the "illusion" the corporation feeds the public, while Apple’s voice represents the uncomfortable truth underneath.
It’s one of the few times a commercial jingle—if you can even call it that—became a piece of legitimate art.
The recording didn't just stay in the commercial. It took on a life of its own on streaming platforms. Fans of her work saw it as a bridge between the jazz-inflected pop of her early years and the percussive, experimental brilliance of Fetch the Bolt Cutters. It proved she could take a known quantity—one of the most famous songs in the American songbook—and completely colonize it. It belongs to her now, too.
The Technical Brilliance of the Arrangement
There is a specific moment in the song—right around the two-minute mark—where the instrumentation swells. It isn't a happy swell. It’s a cacophony of strings and industrial clanging. It feels like a panic attack.
Apple’s pitch is perfect, but her delivery is jagged. She uses "straight tone" (singing without vibrato) for most of the verses, which gives it a cold, modern feel. Then, when she finally lets her voice flutter on the word "imagination," it feels like a breakthrough. It’s a masterclass in vocal dynamics. Most singers would try to out-sing Gene Wilder by going big, hitting high notes, and making it a "diva" moment. Apple went the opposite direction. She went small. She went dark.
A contrast in "Wonder"
- Gene Wilder: Playful, mysterious, inviting, magical.
- Fiona Apple: Somber, disillusioned, atmospheric, heavy.
It’s the difference between seeing a magic trick and learning how the trick is done. Both are fascinating, but one is much more grounded in reality.
Impact on Modern Cover Culture
Before this track, most covers for commercials were "indie-pop" versions of classic rock songs—think of the "breathless female vocal over a piano" trope that dominated the 2010s. Apple avoided that cliché. She didn't make it "pretty indie." She made it "avant-garde horror."
This paved the way for more "dark" covers in trailers and advertisements. You can see the DNA of this track in almost every modern movie trailer that takes a well-known pop song and turns it into a slow, terrifying orchestral piece. But while those often feel like a formula, Apple’s felt like a genuine expression of her artistic identity. She didn't just record a song for a paycheck; she interpreted a text.
The irony is thick. A song about a chocolate factory, used for a burrito company, sung by a woman who famously hates the "bullshit" of the industry.
Actionable Takeaways for Music Fans
If you want to truly appreciate what is happening in the Fiona Apple Pure Imagination recording, try these specific listening steps:
- Listen with high-quality headphones: The "room sound" is a huge part of the experience. You can hear the mechanical clicks and the hiss of the recording space, which adds to the industrial theme.
- Watch the "Scarecrow" short film first: Seeing the visuals it was designed for helps clarify why Apple chose such a somber tone. It isn't just "sad for the sake of being sad"; it's a commentary on the video's plot.
- Compare it to her 1990s work: If you listen to "Shadowboxer" and then this, you can hear how her voice has aged and deepened, gaining a textured "gravel" that she uses as an instrument in itself.
- Analyze the lyrics without the melody: Read the lyrics of "Pure Imagination" as a poem. Without the bouncy, whimsical music of the original, the words "Everything you want to, do it" sound almost like a nihilistic challenge.
The track remains a standout in her discography because it showcases her ability to act through song. She isn't just a singer; she’s a storyteller who knows that sometimes, the most effective way to tell a story is to strip away the "happily ever after" and look at the gears grinding underneath. It is a haunting, essential piece of 21st-century pop reinterpretion.