Fiona Apple

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 8th of March 2020, Fiona Apple posted a video of herself spelling out a sentence with her fingers: M-Y-R-E-C-O-R-D-I-S-D-O-N-E. Fans had waited years for any sign of that sentence. Apple is an American singer-songwriter, born Fiona Apple McAfee-Maggart in 1977. All five of her albums have reached the top 20 on the Billboard 200. By 2021 she had sold over 15 million records worldwide. Her career, though, has been shaped as much by long silences and abandoned sessions as by hits. How did a teenager with a demo tape become a star so quickly? What happened to an album that fans believed a record label was hiding? And what did it take to finish the record she announced with her hands? The answers start in New York City, with a child at a piano.

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• 2. A Childhood Between Coasts

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  Applause, a Broadway musical, is where Fiona Apple's parents met. Singer Diane McAfee and actor Brandon Maggart were both in its cast, and their daughter was born in New York City on the 13th of September 1977. Her father came from Tennessee, and through him she has Melungeon ancestry. Her maternal grandparents were the dancer Millicent Green and the big band vocalist Johnny McAfee. Her sister Amber sings cabaret under the name Maude Maggart, and the actor Garett Maggart is her half-brother.

  Morningside Gardens, in Morningside Heights, was home to Apple, her mother, and her sister. Summers meant Los Angeles, where her father lived. She went to St. Hilda's & St. Hugh's School, a private Episcopal school, and she was also homeschooled. Piano lessons trained her ear, and she often turned guitar tablature into standard notation. She began writing songs at age eight. Later she played along with jazz standards and discovered Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, who became major influences.

  When Apple was 12, she was raped outside her family's Harlem apartment. The harm did not end there. She had already struggled since childhood with obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and anxiety, and she has also been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Afterward she developed an eating disorder, driven by a sense that her growing body made her "bait" for predators. People assumed she was anorexic. She has said otherwise: "I was just really depressed and self-loathing." Her obsessive-compulsive disorder also grew into avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, which required food to be a particular color or shape.

  Model Mugging classes gave her self-defense training, yet panic attacks still struck on her walks home from school. She moved in with her father for a year. In Los Angeles she attended Alexander Hamilton High School for her second year.

  In a 2000 interview, Apple rejected journalists' guesses that her songs dealt with the assault. She called it "a boring pain" that stayed out of her writing. In 2020 she said she regretted that remark. "Young girls were listening," she recalled, and she was furious with herself for dismissing the subject. In 1994, a demo tape of her teenage songs was about to start passing from hand to hand.

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• 3. Fame Arrives Early

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  Three songs sat on the demo tape in 1994: "Never Is a Promise", "Not One of Those Times", and "He Takes a Taxi". Apple gave it to a friend who worked as a babysitter for the music publicist Kathryn Schenker. Schenker passed the tape to Sony Music executive Andy Slater. He was struck by what he heard and signed her to a record deal.

  Tidal arrived in 1996 on Work Records and Columbia Records. Apple wrote its songs during her teens, and much of the record was inspired by a recent breakup with her first boyfriend. It sold 2.7 million copies and went three times Platinum in the U.S. The third single, "Criminal", reached the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. Its controversial video, directed by Mark Romanek, played on MTV. "Criminal" also won the Grammy for Best Female Rock Performance at the 39th Annual Grammy Awards. Other singles included "Shadowboxer", "Sleep to Dream", and "Never Is a Promise".

  At the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, Apple accepted Best New Artist for "Sleep to Dream". Her speech began bluntly: "This world is bullshit." She ended it with advice to the audience: "Go with yourself." Rolling Stone gave her a chance to answer the backlash in January 1998. "When I have something to say, I'll say it," she told the magazine. Around then she covered the Beatles' "Across the Universe" and Percy Mayfield's "Please Send Me Someone to Love" for the film Pleasantville. She also canceled the last 21 dates of her tour, citing "personal family problems". In 1997 she met the director Paul Thomas Anderson at a photoshoot, and their relationship lasted until 2002.

  When the Pawn... followed in 1999, with a title that is really a poem. Apple wrote it after reading letters in Spin responding to an article that had portrayed her unfavorably. Its length earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for 2001. By 2007, Soulwax had topped it with a remix album, Most of the Remixes, whose title runs 100 characters longer.

  Jon Brion produced the album, and it was made during Apple's time with Anderson. The lyrics are more expressive, and the arrangements experiment with drum loops, the Chamberlin, and the drummer Matt Chamberlain. Rolling Stone and other publications praised it. It sold less than Tidal but still reached one million copies in the U.S. and Platinum status. The lead single, "Fast as You Can", reached the top 20 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart and became her first Top 40 hit in the UK. The videos for "Paper Bag" and "Limp", the latter directed by Anderson, got very little airplay.

  In February 2000, about 3,000 people packed the Roseland Ballroom in New York City. Equipment problems plagued the set. Apple apologized repeatedly for the sound, cried, and finally left the stage without returning. After finishing that tour later in 2000, she moved to Los Angeles, where she still lived as of 2020.

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• 4. The Album Fans Thought Was Shelved

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  During the break that followed, Apple considered retiring from recording. She still sang, though. Johnny Cash invited her to duet on a cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge over Troubled Water" for his album American IV: The Man Comes Around. That track earned a Grammy nomination for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals. She also joined Cash on Cat Stevens's "Father and Son", which appeared on his 2003 collection Unearthed.

  Spring 2002 brought a weekly lunch between Apple and Jon Brion, her friend and the producer of When the Pawn... Brion reportedly begged her to make another album. She agreed. He then went to Epic Records with strict conditions, including no deadline, and the label eventually accepted them. Sessions for Extraordinary Machine began in 2002 at Ocean Way Studios in Nashville. They then moved to the Paramour Mansion in Los Angeles. In May 2003, the finished work went to Sony executives.

  Then the music escaped. Across 2004 and 2005, tracks leaked online as MP3s and were played on U.S. and international radio. Soon the entire album was circulating. A website distributing it was quickly shut down, but the files reached peer-to-peer networks, and fans downloaded them. A fan-led campaign pushed for an official release. Many fans were sure that Epic had rejected the record and was sitting on it.

  Spin later reported the account of the bassist Mike Elizondo, who had played on When the Pawn... He said the label had not rejected anything. Apple herself was unhappy with the results and chose to redo the record. Elizondo returned as co-producer to finish the tracks he had begun with Brion and Apple.

  In August 2005, the album was given an October release date. Elizondo and Brian Kehew, who co-produced, had rebuilt much of the production from scratch. Two of the 11 leaked tracks stayed relatively unchanged, and one new song joined the list. Rumors of a rift between Apple and Brion proved wrong. They regularly play together at Largo, a Los Angeles club, and did so with Elizondo on bass just before the official release news broke.

  Extraordinary Machine debuted at number seven and received a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album. It eventually went Gold. Its singles "Parting Gift", "O' Sailor", "Not About Love", and "Get Him Back" never entered any Billboard chart. Apple toured to promote it. From the middle of the decade she also dated the writer and television creator Jonathan Ames.

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• 5. Waiting for a New Label President

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  Late in 2010, Billboard reported that a new Apple album would arrive in spring 2011. The singer Michelle Branch said she had heard some tracks. The drummer Charley Drayton told Modern Drummer that he was co-producing. Spring came and went with no record. Billboard then reported that Epic was not aware of any album.

  Apple pushed the release to 2012. She explained that she was waiting for the label to find a new president, because she did not want her work mishandled amid corporate disarray. In January 2012, the new president, LA Reid, hinted at new music from her. Epic soon announced a release that year. Apple announced South by Southwest appearances and a spring 2012 tour shortly afterward.

  The Idler Wheel... came out in the United States on the 19th of June 2012. It peaked at number three on the Billboard 200, her best showing there, and critics were enthusiastic. American Songwriter wrote that it "isn't always pretty, but it pulses with life, brutal and true." The album earned a nomination for Best Alternative Music Album at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, and a United States tour followed.

  Press for the record brought personal disclosures. In a June 2012 interview, Apple said she had briefly married an unnamed French photographer, later revealed to be Lionel Deluy, "for complicated reasons". She also mentioned a passing liaison with a younger woman. In July she sat down with Marc Maron for his WTF podcast. There she described living with obsessive-compulsive disorder throughout her adult life and said she had recently decided to quit drinking.

  On the 19th of September 2012, a U.S. Border Patrol agent at an internal checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, Texas, arrested Apple. She was charged with possessing hashish and held at the Hudspeth County Jail. She had been traveling to a concert in Austin. That November, she posted a letter to fans, scanned onto her website and Facebook page, postponing the South American leg of her tour. Her dog, Janet, had Addison's disease and a tumor that had been "idling in her chest" for two years.

  Apple also gave the film This Is 40, directed by Judd Apatow, an unreleased song called "Dull Tool". A second song recorded for the movie went unused. Eight years later, it resurfaced on her 2020 album as "Cosmonauts".

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• 6. Fetch the Bolt Cutters

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  Two Instagram posts in March 2019 hinted that Apple was recording again. By September 2019, she told Vulture that the record was in its final stages. A band had played on it, and she was planning an early 2020 release. In January 2020, she told Vulture again that it would likely appear "in a few months."

  An interview with The New Yorker revealed the title: Fetch the Bolt Cutters. The album has 13 tracks, all self-produced. It arrived digitally on the 17th of April 2020 and drew widespread acclaim from music critics.

  At the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, it won Best Alternative Music Album. Its lead single, "Shameika", won Best Rock Performance. That song carried a second purpose. In June 2020, Apple pledged two years of earnings from its placements in television and movies to the Harlem Children's Zone.

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• 7. A Voice for Hire

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  Zach Galifianakis appeared in the video for "Not About Love", and in June 2006 Apple returned the favor on his joke track "Come Over and Get It (Up in 'Dem Guts)". That year she also recorded "Sally's Song" for the special edition soundtrack of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. In May 2006, VH1's Decades Rock Live! had her pay tribute to Elvis Costello with his "I Want You", released as a digital single. In August 2007 she toured the East Coast with Nickel Creek.

  Duets and covers kept coming. In 2008 she recorded "Still I" with Christophe Deluy. In 2009 she took on "Why Try to Change Me Now" and "I Walk A Little Faster" for a Cy Coleman tribute, The Best Is Yet to Come. In January 2010 she and Brion played a charity concert for Haiti earthquake relief, where she sang "(S)he's Funny That Way", a song often associated with Billie Holiday. In June 2010 she released "So Sleepy", written by children working with the nonprofit 826LA and included on the compilation Chickens in Love. On the 24th of August 2010 came Margaret Cho's album Cho Dependent, with Apple as a collaborator.

  September 2013 brought a Chipotle ad that followed a scarecrow discovering the truth about factory farming and processed food. Apple sang "Pure Imagination" from the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on the soundtrack. Viewers called the result "haunted", "dystopian", "bizarre", and "beautiful". In 2014 she wrote "Container", the opening theme for the Showtime drama The Affair.

  Blake Mills first performed with her publicly in 2013, on an acoustic version of "I Know". In 2014 she joined several of his shows, including stops in New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts, on his tour behind Heigh Ho. Their joint run is listed as the Anything We Want Tour. Apple also worked with Andrew Bird, and in 2016 she sang on "Left Handed Kisses" from his album Are You Serious.

  Politics entered the setlist too. In September 2017 she played rarities at the Ohana Festival in Dana Point, California. That year she also released "Tiny Hands" for the Women's March on Washington. In 2018, at the Girl School Festival in Los Angeles, she joined Shirley Manson for Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me". Apple wore a white T-shirt reading "KNEEL, PORTNOW". It was read as a reply to Neil Portnow, then head of the Grammys, who had said women need to "step up" to earn more nominations.

  In January 2019, King Princess and Apple released a version of Apple's 1999 song "I Know" for Spotify's RISE program. She appeared on the documentary and soundtrack for Echo in the Canyon, with Jakob Dylan, covering songs by acts such as the Beach Boys and the Byrds. In November 2019, she covered the Waterboys' "Whole of the Moon" for The Affair's series finale.

  Bob Dylan's 39th album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, credits her on piano for "Murder Most Foul", confirmed on the 17th of June 2020. In April 2021 she covered Sharon Van Etten's "Love More" for the 10th anniversary of Van Etten's album Epic. That December she sang on Phoebe Bridgers's "Silent Night", released with the Christmas EP If We Make It Through December. For the first-season finale of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, she joined composer Bear McCreary on "Where the Shadows Lie". She sings the Ring Verse, part of which is inscribed on the One Ring in Black Speech.

  In March 2025 she appeared on the Waterboys' single "Letter from an Unknown Girlfriend", from the album Life, Death and Dennis Hopper. On the 25th of April 2025 she covered Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" for the tribute album Heart Of Gold: The Songs Of Neil Young Volume I.

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• 8. Voice, Honors, and Causes

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  Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic traced Apple's "roots" to "jazz, show tunes, and classic '70s singer/songwriters." He said that blend came into sharper focus on When the Pawn... Apple sings in a contralto range. Her music has been labeled art pop, baroque pop, chamber pop, art rock, alternative rock, and jazz pop.

  Honors have followed. She has won three Grammy Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards, and a Billboard Music Video Award. Three of her albums appear on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Smaller prizes came earlier. When the Pawn... brought her the California Music Award for Outstanding Female Vocalist, and Extraordinary Machine earned an Esky Music Award for Best Songbird.

  On the 30th of June 2019, Apple pledged two years of earnings from television and movie placements of "Criminal" to the While They Wait fund. The fund helps refugees with basic necessities, immigration fees, and legal services. In 2020, Scott Hechinger of While They Wait told Vulture that she had given $90,000, enough to help 15 families.

  She is known for liberal political views. In August 2020, she narrated a video from Brooklyn Defender Services, We Have Rights, and WITNESS. It teaches immigrants and bystanders how to document raids and arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Apple told Vulture that people want to help but often lack a way in. "If you've got eyes, ears, a notepad, and a pencil, you can help," she said. "But you have to know the rules."

  Since 2021, Apple has volunteered as a court watcher with Courtwatch PG. On the 7th of May 2025, she released "Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)", a protest song about how cash bail hurts working-class families. She drew on her time with Courtwatch PG and Free Black Mamas DMV Bailout, and the song carried her courtroom volunteering into a new record.

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