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 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.
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FIONA APPLE TICKETS
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Early life
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.
After joking 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.
[1] 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".
[2]
Career
Apple's break into the music industry came in 1994, when Apple gave a demo tape to the babysitter of music publicist Kathryn Schenker. Schenker passed the tape along to
Sony Music executive Andy Slater.
[3] Apple's rich
alto voice, piano skills and lyrics captured his attention,
[4] 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
[5] and was certified three times
platinum in the U.S.
[6]
"
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"
[7]
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."
[8]
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."
[9] 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.
[10]
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.
[11] 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.
[12]
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 the
Chamberlin and
drummer Matt Chamberlain.
[13] 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. [14] [15]
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 [16] 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." [17] 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., [18], 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". [19]
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"; [20] her version was subsequently released as a digital single.
Apple toured the East Coast during August 2007 with Nickel Creek. [21] [22]
Discography
Studio albums
Year
| Album details
| Peak chart positions
| RIAA[
] |
US
| US Heat
| UK [23]
| AUS
| FRA
|
1996
| Tidal
- Released: July 23, 1996
- Label: Clean Slate/Epic Records
| 15
| 1
| —
| 43
| 21
| 3× Multi-Platinum
|
1999
| When the Pawn
- Released: November 9, 1999
- Label: Clean Slate/Epic Records
| 13
| —
| 46
| 54
| 32
| Platinum
|
2005
| Extraordinary Machine
- Released: October 4, 2005
- Label: Epic Records
| 7
| —
| —
| 53
| 61
| Gold
|
— denotes the album failed to chart or not released
|
EPs
Year
| EP details
|
2006
| iTunes Originals – Fiona Apple
- Released: February 14, 2006
- Label: iTunes
|
Singles
Year
| Single
| Peak chart positions
| Album
|
US
| US Mod Rock
| US T40 Main
| UK
|
1996
| "Shadowboxer"
| —
| 34
| 32
| —
| Tidal
|
"Slow Like Honey"
| —
| —
| —
| —
|
1997
| "Sleep to Dream"
| —
| 28
| —
| —
|
"Criminal"
| 21
| 4
| 17
| —
|
"The First Taste"
| —
| —
| —
| —
|
1998
| "Never Is a Promise"
| —
| —
| —
| —
|
"Across the Universe"
| —
| —
| —
| —
| Pleasantville (soundtrack)
|
1999
| "Fast As You Can"
| —
| 20
| 29
| 33
| When the Pawn
|
2000
| "Limp"
| —
| —
| —
| —
|
"Paper Bag"
| —
| —
| —
| —
|
2005
| "Parting Gift"
| —
| —
| —
| —
| Extraordinary Machine
|
2006
| "O' Sailor"
| —
| —
| —
| —
|
"Not About Love"
| —
| —
| —
| —
|
2007
| "Get Him Back"
| —
| —
| —
| —
|
— denotes the single failed to chart or not released
|
Other recordings
- "Across the Universe" (Lennon/McCartney) - Soundtrack to the Motion Picture Pleasantville
(1998, Sony), lead vocalist
- "Please Send Me Someone to Love" (Percy Mayfield) - Soundtrack to the Motion Picture Pleasantville
(1998, Sony), lead vocalist
- "Bridge over Troubled Water" (Paul Simon) - duet with Johnny Cash from American IV: The Man Comes Around
(2002)
- "Father and Son" (Cat Stevens) - duet with Johnny Cash from Unearthed
(2003)
- "Frosty the Snowman" - from Christmas Calling
(2003)
- "I Want You" (Elvis Costello) - live version from VH1's Live for Decades Rock Live!, released as an iTunes single (2006)
- "Sally's Song" (Catherine O'Hara) - from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas
Special Edition Soundtrack (2006)
- "Why Try To Change Me Now" (Cy Coleman) - recorded for the "Then Was Then And Now is Now, a tribute to Cy Coleman" CD
- "Angel Eyes" - a snippet of the song is available at
- "Still I" - a duet with Christophe Deluy, hear a snippet of the song available on
- "I Walk A Little Faster" (Cy Coleman) - recorded for the "The Best Is Yet To Come" CD
Music videos
Year
| Song
| Director
| Album
|
1996
| "Shadowboxer"
| Jim Gable
| Tidal
|
1997
| "The First Taste" (Released only in France)
| Dewey Nicks
|
"Sleep to Dream"
| Stéphane Sednaoui
|
"Criminal"
| Mark Romanek
|
"Never is a Promise"
| 1998
| "Across the Universe"
| Paul Thomas Anderson
| Pleasantville
soundtrack
|
1999
| "Fast as You Can"
| When the Pawn...
|
2000
| "Limp"
|
"Paper Bag"
|
2005
| "Parting Gift"
| Spencer Maggart
| Extraordinary Machine
|
"Extraordinary Machine"
|
"O' Sailor"
| Floria Sigismondi
|
2006
| "Not About Love"
| Michael Blieden
|
Awards and nominations
References
- http://www.bestsexycelebs.com/fiona_apple
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/jan/29/popandrock.fionaapple
- Images - Fiona Apple
- The Key to Success Lies in the Mix
- "Loyal fans helped free Fiona Apple's CD". Associated Press/MSNBC Entertainment. October 5 2005.
- "Gold and Platinum Searchable Database". RIAA.com.
- ''Spin'', October 1997.
- THE HOT ROCK | Chris Rock | Pop Culture News | News | Entertainment Weekly | 2
- The caged Bird Sings. rollingstone.com.
- [1]. rollingstone.com.
- iTunes Originals Interview, 2006
- Soulwax remixes. The full title of the Soulwax compilation is ''Most of the remixes we've made over the years except for the one for Einstürzende Neubauten because we lost it and a few we didn't think sounded good enough or just didn't fill in length-wise. But including some that are hard to find because either people forgot about them or simply because they haven't been released yet. A few we really love. One we think is just OK. Some we did for free. Some we did for money. Some just for ourselves without permission and some for friends as swaps but never on time and always at our studio in Ghent.''
- Seattle Weekly: Matt Chamberlain Talk About Recording With Apple
- Extraordinary Machines: Fiona Apple's new album
- Worst Onstage Meltdowns
- New York Times " Interview: The lost Apple".
- Fiona Apple's Machine Finally Turned On ''Spin''. August 15, 2005. Retrieved on March 5, 2009
- Cohen, Jonathan. "Fiona Taps Rice, Garza For Summer Trek". ''Billboard''. April 19, 2006.
- Listen to this come over and get it ''Perezhilton.com'' Retrieved on 05-09-07
- Decades Rock Live
- Hasty, Kate. "Apple, Nickel Creek Teaming For Tour". ''Billboard''. May 18 2007.
- Madison, Tjames. "Fiona Apple joins Nickel Creek's 'farewell' tour". ''LiveDaily''. May 17, 2007. Retrieved March 2, 2008.
- British Hit Singles & Albums