I Want to Make People Happy Songtext
von Fiona Apple

I can remember
When I first started playing the piano and
Writing things when I wasn′t writing actual songs yet
Where there was words
To it
And I used to write
These kind of classical pieces
That in my head would go along with
Scenes from National Geographic programme
With like a lion chasing a goat or something
And I would um
I would imagine that in my head
Invent kind of
Write a tune against that imaginary scene
And then I'd started putting words to songs when I Started writing songs for my friends
′Cos I remember my friend
My best friend
My first song with words
I think was
For my best friend in like second grade
And her name was Manuela
So the first song was called Manuela
Because she had a fight with her parents
And she was feeling really bad
And for some reason it was like
I wanted to give her something
To make her feel better
And I just thought I'd write her a song


I was talking to my friend
A couple days ago and I
I admitted something to him
That I don't ever say out loud because it just sounds so
Sounds kinda gooey and embarrassing
But I do remember when I asked my mother for piano lessons
And uh
We were living on a hundred and sixty seventh street
In New York
And um
We just moved there
And I was in this new bedroom
And I couldn′t sleep
And I went into my mom′s room
And um
She was up in her loft bed
And the light was on
She was reading
And I crept out
And I said Mom
'Cos I remember sitting in the room and all of a sudden
Just having this
Bang
I want to have piano lessons
And I remember saying to her
Uh Momma
Can I take piano lessons?
And she said
Yeah sure
I was like
Can we start looking tomorrow?
She′s like yeah sure why?
And here's just ah and I said
I just want to make people happy
Which I have not said out loud
To anyone except my friend the other day
And just because it makes me like
So embarrassed that I said that
But um
I don′t know why but
I guess it was just to help other people too

You know
When I first decided to
Try and take the songs public
My friend Sue
Sue Chang
Who's one of my best friends still
We were going to night school together
In Eleventh grade in New York
And she really really really
Was important
In my decision to
Even make a demo tape
Because she was saying to me
There′s no way
That you could go in with these songs
And that they're not gonna sign you
And I was like
You know, she was so optimistic
About everything
That I was like uh
You know everybody says that
They're like I′m the greatest
And she says
No I′m telling you there's no way
You can′t fail
You're so good
And she was so sure of me
That it was like
She really made me go
Okay well I′ll make a
I'll make a tape of like three songs
And um
When night school closed down
Before we could go back to Senior year
I ended up moving out
I thought that was like
Every door was closing for me
So I took that
As a sign to like
Come out to California
Where my dad lives here
And I went to uh
A home school
And I made a demo tape
And then
My father and I made a
Seventy seven
I think seventy seven demo tapes
There′s
Never a promise and then there was
I believe a song called
He takes a taxi
I think that was on it
And then
There was another song called
Not one of those times
And the first one I handed out
I got signed
I gave it to
A friend of mine
Anna Schematov
Who was babysitting for
Cathy Shanker the publicist
Cathy had
A Christmas party to
Which Andy Slater went and
I got signed