Background and career
Fiona Apple McAfee-Maggart (born September 13, 1977) is an American singer-songwriter. All five of her albums have reached the top 20 on the Billboard 200, and as of 2021, she has sold over 15 million records worldwide. Apple has received numerous accolades, including three Grammy Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards, and a Billboard Music Video Award. Three of her albums appear on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. The youngest daughter of actor Brandon Maggart, Apple was born in New York City and was raised alternating between her mother's home in New York and her father's in Los Angeles. She studied piano as a child and began writing songs when she was eight years old. Her debut album, Tidal (1996), comprises songs written during her teens, and won Best Female Rock Performance at the 39th Annual Grammy Awards for its single "Criminal". Her second album, produced by Jon Brion, When the Pawn... (1999), was met with critical acclaim and received platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). For her third album, Extraordinary Machine (2005), Apple again collaborated with Brion and began recording the album in 2002. She was reportedly unhappy with the production and opted not to release the record, leading fans to protest Epic Records, erroneously believing that the label was withholding its release. The album was remade with producers Mike Elizondo and Brian Kehew and released in October 2005. It was certified gold and nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album. In 2012, she released her fourth studio album, The Idler Wheel..., which received critical praise and a nomination for Best Alternative Music Album at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards and was followed by a tour of the United States. Apple's fifth studio album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters (2020), won two Grammy Awards: Best Alternative Music Album and Best Rock Performance for the lead single, "Shameika".
Fiona Apple was born Fiona Apple McAfee-Maggart on September 13, 1977, in New York City to singer Diane McAfee and actor Brandon Maggart, who met when both were cast in the Broadway musical Applause. Her father is from Tennessee, and through him, Apple has Melungeon ancestry. Her maternal grandparents were dancer Millicent Green and big band vocalist Johnny McAfee. Her sister Amber sings cabaret under the stage name Maude Maggart, and actor Garett Maggart is her half-brother. Apple grew up in Morningside Gardens in Morningside Heights with her mother and sister, but spent summers with her father in Los Angeles. She attended the private Episcopal school St. Hilda's & St. Hugh's School and later Alexander Hamilton High School, as well as being homeschooled. As she studied piano, she often transcribed guitar tablature into standard notation. Apple later began to play along with jazz standards, discovering Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, who became major influences. Since childhood, Apple has struggled with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), depression, and anxiety. She has also been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder. At age 12 she was raped outside her family's Harlem apartment. She subsequently developed an eating disorder to intentionally keep herself slim as she perceived her developing body as "bait" for sexual predators. "I definitely did have an eating disorder", she recalled. "What was really frustrating for me was that everyone thought I was anorexic, and I wasn't. I was just really depressed and self-loathing." She also described how OCD developed into avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, requiring food to be a certain color or shape. After the rape, Apple began attending Model Mugging classes, practicing self-defense, but continued to suffer panic attacks while walking home from school, which led her to live with her father for a year. In Los Angeles, she attended Alexander Hamilton High School for her second year. In a 2000 interview, Apple said that, contrary to speculation by journalists, she did not write songs about the trauma of her rape: "It doesn't get into the writing. It's a boring pain. It's such a fuckin' old pain that, you know, there's nothing poetic about it." In a 2020 interview, she expressed regret about this remark: "Young girls were listening, and I said 'that's a boring pain.' Fuck, man. I'm so pissed at myself for doing that. I'm so pissed at the person who told me that was boring and who got on my shit for—got on my case for trying to talk about things".
Apple was introduced to the music industry in 1994, when she gave a demo tape containing the songs "Never Is a Promise", "Not One of Those Times", and "He Takes a Taxi" to a friend who worked as a babysitter for music publicist Kathryn Schenker. Schenker passed the tape along to Sony Music executive Andy Slater. Apple's abilities captured his attention, and Slater signed her to a record deal. In 1996, Apple's debut album, Tidal, was released by Work Records and Columbia Records. The record was largely inspired by Apple's recent breakup with her first boyfriend. It sold 2.7 million copies and was certified three times Platinum in the U.S. "Criminal", the third single, became a hit and reached the Top 40 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. The song's controversial Mark Romanek-directed music video played on MTV. Other singles from Tidal include "Shadowboxer", "Sleep to Dream", and "Never Is a Promise". Apple accepted the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards for her song "Sleep to Dream". In her acceptance speech she said:
This world is bullshit. And you shouldn't model your life—wait a second—you shouldn't model your life about what you think that we think is cool and what we're wearing and what we're saying and everything. Go with yourself. Apple responded to criticisms of her acceptance speech in Rolling Stone in January 1998, saying, "When I have something to say, I'll say it." During this period, she covered the Beatles' "Across the Universe" and Percy Mayfield's "Please Send Me Someone to Love" for the soundtrack of the film Pleasantville. She later canceled the last 21 dates on a tour in support of her album due to "personal family problems". In 1997, Apple met director Paul Thomas Anderson during a photoshoot, and the two began a relationship that lasted until 2002. Apple's second album, When the Pawn..., was released in 1999. Its full title is a poem Apple wrote after reading letters that appeared in Spin about an article that had cast her in a negative light. The title's length earned it a spot in the Guinness Book of Records for 2001. (As of 2007, it is no longer the longest album title, as Soulwax released Most of the Remixes, a remix album whose title surpasses When the Pawn's length by 100 characters). When the Pawn was cultivated during Apple's relationship with Anderson. Produced by Jon Brion, it has more expressive lyrics, experiments more with drum loops, and incorporates both the Chamberlin and drummer Matt Chamberlain. The album received a positive reception from publications such as Rolling Stone. It did not fare as well commercially as her debut, but it was an RIAA-certified Platinum album and sold one million copies in the U.S. Its lead single, "Fast as You Can", reached the top 20 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart and became Apple's first Top 40 hit in the UK. The videos for two follow-up singles, "Paper Bag" and "Limp" (directed by Anderson), received very little play. In a February 2000 set hampered by equipment issues to 3,000 audience members at the New York City Roseland Ballroom, a frustrated Apple left the stage without returning. She appeared distraught by the sound quality, apologizing repeatedly for the sound and crying. After completing a concert tour in support of her second album in 2000, Apple moved to Los Angeles, where she still resides as of 2020.
During her hiatus, Apple contemplated retiring from recording. She sang with Johnny Cash on a cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge over Troubled Water" that appears on his album American IV: The Man Comes Around and was nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best Country Collaboration with Vocals". She also collaborated with Cash on Cat Stevens's "Father and Son", included in his 2003 collection Unearthed.
Apple's third album, Extraordinary Machine, was originally produced by Jon Brion. In spring 2002, Apple and Brion, her longtime friend and producer on When the Pawn, met for their weekly lunch meeting. Brion reportedly "begged" Apple to make another album. Apple agreed, and Brion went to Epic Records with strict stipulations (including no deadline), to which the label eventually agreed. Recording sessions began in 2002 at Ocean Way Studios in Nashville, then moved to the Paramour Mansion in Los Angeles. Work on the album continued until 2003, and in May of that year it was submitted to Sony executives. In 2004 and 2005, tracks were leaked on the Internet in MP3 format and played on U.S. and international radio. Subsequently, MP3s of the entire album went online. Although a website distributing the album was quickly shut down, it soon reached P2P networks and was downloaded by fans. A fan-led campaign supported the album's official release. Mike Elizondo, who played bass on Pawn, was brought back as co-producer to complete the tracks he had begun with Brion and Apple. Spin later reported: "Fans erroneously thought that Apple's record label, Epic, had rejected the first version of Extraordinary Machine... in reality, according to Elizondo, Apple was unhappy with the results, and it was her decision to redo the record, not her label's." In August 2005, the album was given an October release date. Production had been largely redone "from scratch" by Elizondo and was co-produced by Brian Kehew. Two of the 11 leaked tracks were relatively unchanged, and one new song was included. Despite suggestions that the album had caused a rift between Brion and Apple, they regularly perform together at Largo, a club in Los Angeles, including a joint appearance with Elizondo on bass just before the news broke of an official release. Extraordinary Machine debuted at number seven and was nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best Pop Vocal Album". It was eventually certified Gold, though its singles ("Parting Gift", "O' Sailor", "Not About Love", and "Get Him Back") failed to enter any Billboard charts. Apple went on tour to promote the album. Beginning in the mid-2000s, Apple dated writer and television creator Jonathan Ames.
