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Fiona Apple (born Fiona Apple McAfee Maggart on September 13, 1977) is a Grammy-winning American singer-songwriter. She gained popularity through her 1996 album Tidal, especially with the single "Criminal", and because of the music video made for it. Her music is fundamentally based on very personal poetic verses, accompanied by often aggressive and progressive production, rooted equally in early jazz, pop, electronica, and alt-rock. A member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Apple is a vegan. Singer songwriter Fiona Apple gained a recording contract in 1995 as one in a crop of mid-'90s female artists, but her confessional writing and throaty vocals made the teenager sound like much more than just the latest flavor. Born in 1977 in New York to singer Diana McAfee and actor Brandon Maggart, Apple began playing the piano at the age of eight and started composing her own songs just four years later, after the separation of her parents and her own brutal rape. After leaving high school at the age of 16, she journeyed to Los Angeles to see her father and make a demo tape of her songs. After several months of tape-passing, Sony Music signed Apple in 1995. After recording Tidal with producer Andrew Slater, she released the album in mid-1996 and began touring. Constant video play of "Criminal" and "Shadowboxer" brought Tidal into the upper reaches of the album charts; it eventually went platinum, and landed her a Grammy plus an MTV Video Music Award. (She made one of the most famous VMA acceptance speeches in history when she proclaimed "This world is bullsh*t" and quoted Maya Angelou.) The long-awaited When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing 'Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and if You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and if You Fall It Won't Matter, 'Cuz You'll Know That You're Right -- the album's full title -- followed in 1999. It was a bold move on Apple's part, to follow her debut with an album with 90 words in the title. But she was more confident than ever on When the Pawn, working with producer Jon Brion to craft literate, jazzy pop that played mightily to her strengths. Some of her more casual fans were turned off, but the Apple diehards only grew, and When the Pawn peaked at number 13 on the Billboard charts (aided by the single "Fast as You Can"). Still, its brash title, heady sound, and Apple's on-again, off-again relationship with the public proved obstacles to repeating Tidal's platinum success. She wasn't heard from again until 2002-03, when word spread through the internet that Sony was unhappy with Apple's newest songs. (By now the Apple cult had grown immensely, helped along by blogs and message boards.) The controversy continued through 2004, with the facts about who was responsible for the griping -- Apple or her label -- ranging from murky to downright unclear. But tracks from her recording sessions had certainly leaked, and while they were apparently unfinished, the fan response was mostly rabid. Apple could now add internet sensation to her lengthy list of titles (prodigy, tease, true songwriting talent, etc.). By summer 2005, Fiona Apple's third album had a name and a release date. Extraordinary Machine was slated for an October release; it would feature production work from Mike Elizondo and at least some of the material that had leaked, though in what form was unclear. Apple's family has roots in entertainment. Born in New York City, she is the daughter of singer Diane McAfee and actor Brandon Maggart. Her older sister, Amber, sings cabaret under the stage name Maude Maggart. Her half brother Spencer is a director and directed the video for her single "Parting Gift". Her half brother Garett Maggart starred in the TV series The Sentinel. In addition, her maternal grandparents were Millicent Green, a dancer with the George White's Scandals, a series of 1920s musical revues similar to the Ziegfeld Follies, and Johnny McAfee, a multireedist and vocalist of the big band era; her grandparents met while touring with Johnny Hamp and his Orchestra. At age 12, Apple was raped by an intruder in the Upper West Side house she lived in with her mother and sisters. She would later allude to the trauma in songs such as "Sullen Girl". Apple's break into the music industry came in 1994, when Apple gave a demo tape of three songs to a friend who was the babysitter for music publicist Kathryn Schenker. Schenker passed the tape along to producer and manager Andy Slater. Apple's rich alto voice, piano skills and lyrics got the attention of Sony Music executive Andy Slater, who signed her to a record deal. In 1996 Apple's debut album, Tidal, was released by Epic, a subsidiary of Sony. The album went on to sell 2.7 million copies and was certified three times platinum in the U.S. "Criminal", the third single, became Apple's breakthrough hit. The song reached the top forty on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, while the controversial Mark Romanek-directed music video in which a scantily-clad Apple cavorted in a '70s-era tract house became very popular on MTV. Apple later said: "I decided if I was going to be exploited, then I would do the exploiting myself" Other singles from Tidal included "Shadowboxer", "Slow like Honey", "Sleep to Dream", "The First Taste" and "Never Is a Promise". Her public image was tempestuous; Most notoriously, while accepting the 1997 MTV Video Music Award for "Best New Artist" for "Sleep to Dream", she proclaimed: "This world is bullshit, and you shouldn't model your life on what you think that we think is cool, and what we're wearing and what we're saying", referring to the mainstream music industry. Host Chris Rock would comment on her speech later on during the program, saying, "That Fiona Apple was mad, huh? Fiona X was up here". Though her comments were generally greeted with cheers and applause at the awards ceremony, the media backlash was immediate. She was unapologetic, however: "I just had something on my mind and I just said it. And that's really the foreshadowing of my entire career and my entire life. When I have something to say, I'll say it." Stand-up comedian Denis Leary included a satire of this speech on his album, Lock 'n Load, titled "A Reading from the Book of Apple". Janeane Garofalo parodied Apple's comments in light of the fact that her video for "Criminal" seemed to reinforce the same celebrity fixation on weight and appearance that Apple condemned. Apple reacted to this parody, including the reference to her figure and her eating disorder in an article in Rolling Stone, January 1998. During this period Apple contributed covers of The Beatles' "Across the Universe" and Percy Mayfield's "Please Send Me Someone to Love" to the soundtrack of the film Pleasantville. Apple's second album, When the Pawn..., was released in 1999. Its full title is When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You'll Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You Know That You're Right. The title is a poem Apple wrote after reading the readers' letters that appeared in Spin after an article had cast her in a negative light in an earlier issue. The title's length earned it a spot in the Guinness Book of Records for 2001. However, as of October 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. The album was cultivated during Apple's relationship with film director Paul Thomas Anderson. When the Pawn... received a positive reception from publications such as The New York Times and Rolling Stone. When the Pawn..., which was produced by Jon Brion, used more expressive lyrics, experimented more with drum loops, and incorporated both Chamberlin and Chamberlain. It did not fare as well commercially as her debut, though it was an RIAA-certified platinum album and sold 1 million copies in the U.S. The album's 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 then-boyfriend Anderson), received very little play. In 2000, at a concert at the Roseland Ballroom in New York, Apple became dissatisfied with the venue's sound and broke down on stage, berating music critics and the audience with vulgar language, before ending her set early and storming off stage. Apple sang with Johnny Cash on a cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge over Troubled Water" that ended up on Cash's album American IV: The Man Comes Around and was nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best Country Collaboration with Vocals". She also collaborated with him on Cat Stevens's "Father and Son", which was included on Cash's 2003 collection Unearthed. Apple's third album, Extraordinary Machine, was originally produced by Jon Brion. Recording sessions began in 2002 at Ocean Way studios in Nashville, Tennessee, but later moved to the Paramour in Los Angeles. Work on the album continued until 2003, and in May of that year it was submitted to Sony executives. The project was shelved for over two years. 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, believed to have been produced by Brion (although he later claimed the leaked tracks were "tweaked" beyond his own work), went online. Although a website distributing the album was quickly taken offline, they soon reached P2P networks and were downloaded by fans. A fan-led campaign, Free Fiona, was launched in support of the album's official release. In August 2005, the album was given an October release date. Production had been largely redone by Mike Elizondo, who had previously played bass on Pawn, and co-produced by electronica experimentalist Brian Kehew. 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". Two of the eleven previous leaked tracks were relatively unchanged, nine were completely retooled, and one new song was also included. According to Elizondo, "Everything was done from scratch". The final mastering of Extraordinary Machine was performed by Brian Gardner, the released version has a far higher level of compression than any of Fionas' previous releases. Extraordinary Machine became the highest-charting album of Apple's career in the U.S. on its release (debuting at number seven) and was nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best Pop Vocal Album". It was eventually certified gold and sold 462,000 copies in the U.S., though its singles ("Parting Gift", "O' Sailor", "Not About Love" and "Get Him Back") failed to enter any Billboard charts. It was revealed in late 2005 that Sony was initially unhappy with the work, and Apple and Brion sought to rework the album. Sony reportedly made caveats on the process, to which Apple balked. After a long period of waiting, she began an attempt to rework the album with close friend Kehew. Elizondo was brought back as co-producer to complete the tracks he had begun with Brion and Apple. 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. Apple went on a live tour to promote the album in late 2005, and from early 2006 supported Coldplay on their tour of North America. In June 2006 Apple appeared on the joke track "Come over and Get It (Up in 'Dem Guts)" by comedian Zach Galifianakis. Galifianakis previously appeared in the music video for Apple's "Not About Love". The joke track is a complete departure from Apple's previous work, both lyrically and musically. It is a hip-hop/dance track that features Apple singing lines such as "Baby, show me your fanny pack/I'll show you my fanny". Apple recorded a cover of "Sally's Song" for the special edition release of the soundtrack, released in 2006, for the Tim Burton-produced film The Nightmare Before Christmas. In May 2006 Apple paid tribute to Elvis Costello on VH1's concert series Decades Rock Live by performing Costello's hit "I Want You"; her version was subsequently released as a digital single. Apple toured the East coast in late August with Nickel Creek, after which she will begin studio work on her fourth studio album. Apple is also scheduled to appear at the First Annual GirlFrenzy Festival, which also features Sheryl Crow, Avril Lavigne, and other prominent female artists. |
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