I’m doing something I don’t normally like to do and sharing a somewhat unauthorized version of a song. Hopefully the YouTube algorithms are getting some of money back to the actual artist. The song in question is a Fiona Apple’s cover of The Waterboys’ song “The Whole of the Moon” with backing vocals by Phoebe Bridgers. It was apparently used in the closing scene in the final episode of the tv show The Affair. I quit watching that show seasons ago, so I didn’t actually see it used there I just heard about it afterwards.

They haven’t officially released a version of this song, but apparently some people have isolated the audio from the show and posted it on YouTube. It would be nice if Fiona Apple actually put out an official version of it. Or maybe it’s destined to be like my white whale of a song, which is Patty Larkin’s cover of Warren Zevon’s “Tenderness on the Block”, which is used at the end of the movie Sliding Doors but for whatever reason wasn’t on the soundtrack and as far as I’ve ever been able to find has never been recorded. Trust me I’ve been looking for 20+ years at this point.

I’ve always loved the original version of this song, and I really like this cover of it as well. It felt fitting to write about this song this week because it feels like it’s been following me a little bit. On Sunday I watched the cheesy, teen Christmas movie Let It Snow that just came out on Netflix and the original version of this song is prominently featured in it. So here’s a slightly subpar recording of Fiona Apple’s version of it. If she ever releases the song for real I’ll come back and link to that instead.