Fiona Apple McAfee Maggart
(born September 13, 1977) is a Grammy-winning American
singer-songwriter. She gained
popularity through her 1996
album
Tidal, especially with the
single "
Criminal" and its
music video. Her music is influenced by
everything from early
jazz,
pop, to
alt-rock.
It is also characterized by Apple's candid personal lyrics and
imaginative productions, often featuring idiosyncratic arrangements
with instruments as varied as the french horn and
optigan.
Early life
Born in
New York
City
, Apple 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.
After she joked to a friend at the age of 11 that she was going to
kill her sister and herself, Apple's parents placed her in
therapy. The following year, she was raped on
her way home from school and would allude to the
trauma years later in such songs as
"Sullen Girl".
Career
Apple's break into the music industry came in 1994 when she was
eighteen, Apple gave a demo tape to the babysitter of music
publicist Kathryn Schenker. Schenker then passed the tape along to
Sony Music executive Andy
Slater. Apple's rich
alto voice, piano skills
and lyrics captured his attention, and Slater signed her to a
record deal.
1995–1998
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
"Loyal fans helped free Fiona Apple's CD".
Associated Press/
MSNBC
Entertainment. October 5, 2005. 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," "Sleep to
Dream," 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.
However, Apple was unapologetic: "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 responded to these criticisms in an article
in
Rolling Stone in 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.
1999–2001
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 letters that appeared in
Spin regarding an article
that 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 loop, and
incorporated both the
Chamberlin and
drummer Matt 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 March
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.
2002–2007
Apple sang with
Johnny Cash on a cover
of
Simon & Garfunkel's
"
Bridge over Troubled
Water" that ended up 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," which was included in
his 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.
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 , it soon reached
P2P networks and was downloaded by fans. A
fan-led campaign,
Free Fiona, was
launched in support of the album's official release.
It was revealed in April 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,
electronica
experimentalist
Brian Kehew.
Mike Elizondo, who had previously played
bass on
Pawn, 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.
In August 2005, the album was given an October release date.
Production had been largely redone by Elizondo and was co-produced
by Kehew.
Spin later reported the following: "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, and the released version has a
far higher level of compression than any of Fiona's previous
releases.
Extraordinary Machine became the highest-charting album of
Apple's career in the U.S. (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.,Cohen, Jonathan.
"Fiona Taps Rice, Garza For Summer Trek".
Billboard. April 19,
2006. though its singles ("
Parting
Gift," "
O' Sailor," "
Not About Love" and "
Get Him Back") failed to enter any
Billboard charts. Apple went on a live tour to promote the
album in late 2005.
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 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 during August 2007 with
Nickel Creek.
Discography
Studio albums
EPs
Singles
Other recordings
Music videos
Awards and nominations
References
Inline
External links
Wikis
Quiz
Facts
Map
Search