Fiona Apple

A complex musical presence throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, Fiona Apple generated considerable praise for her preternatural songwriting ability, which addressed issues of love, lust and longing in exceptionally literate and adult terms. Apple rose to fame while still a teenager with Tidal (1996), a lush album of piano-and-string-driven ballads which reached triple platinum status thanks to such brooding numbers as "Criminal." Her second album, "When the Pawn..." was released in 1999 and brought her further fame. Apple maintained a passionate fanbase, which rose in her defense over alleged label mismanagement of her third record, Extraordinary Machine (2005). The album found Apple settled comfortably into her newfound status as a cult favorite, which granted her more freedom to pursue her muse to her own content. A fourth album, The Idler Wheel (2012) solidified Apple's status as one of the music industry's most eclectic and free-spirited performers, as well as a formidable chronicler of the human heart's more extreme flights.

Born Fiona Apple McAfee Maggart in New York City on Sept. 13, 1977, Apple was one of two daughters born to singer Diane McAfee and character actor Brandon Maggart, who never married and ended their relationship when she was four years old. Her sister, Amber, later enjoyed her own career as a cabaret singer under the name Maude Maggart. Fiona began singing and writing songs at the age of 12, primarily as a means of exorcising the trauma of a rape she suffered the previous year, as well as a difficult childhood plagued by financial instability and a severe case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. At 16, she left high school in New York for Los Angeles, where a demo tape of several original songs made its way into the hands of music publicist Kathryn Schenker, who in turn passed it onto Sony Music executive Andy Slater. Apple's dusky contralto and beyond-her-years lyrics - at once overly dramatic and unnerving in their personal revelations - earned her a contract with the label, which resulted in her debut album, Tidal (1996). Produced by Slater, the record sold over 2.7 million copies on the strength of sultry, jazz-inflected singles like the Top 40 singles "Criminal," "Shadowboxer" and "Never is a Promise."

Director Mark Romanek's music video for "Criminal," which featured an alarmingly thin Apple in various states of undress while slithering around a darkened house, proved an effective marketing tool in helping the record capture a Grammy nomination and MTV Video Award for Best New Artist. The video drew considerable fire from critics, as did her acceptance speech at the MTV Video Awards, in which she dismissed the world as "bullshit" and the music industry as superficial. Apple returned three years later with her second record, When the Pawn , an abbreviated version of the album's actual title, a 90-word poem written in response to negative reactions to her music and behavior from readers of Spin magazine. The record also distanced itself from the lush atmospherics of Tidal through producer Jon Brion's use of drum loops, as well as less confessional lyrics. The lead single, "Fast as You Can," reached the Top 20, but response was decidedly less ecstatic than for its predecessor. A notorious 2000 performance at New York's Roseland Ballroom, in which Apple veered between rage and tears over an inadequate sound system, further alienated the mainstream press, which drove her into a state of semi-retreat for the next few years.

Apple surfaced infrequently during this period, recording a duet with Johnny Cash on "Bridge Over Troubled Water" which earned a Grammy nomination in 2003, while generating headlines as one-half of an alternative "super couple" with film auteur Paul Thomas Anderson. Apple would contribute to the soundtrack to Anderson's "Magnolia" (1999), a film that the director would later say drew inspiration from passages in Apple's personal journals. After several years of silence, Apple was convinced to return to the recording studio for a new album by producer Jon Brion. Recording sessions began in 2002 before completion and submission to Epic Records the following year. But tracks were leaked on the Internet in 2004, which resulted in a delayed release. Rumors swirled that Epic's parent company, Sony Music, had rejected the album, spawning actual protests from Apple's fans at Sony's headquarters in New York. Eventually, it was revealed that the delay was due to Apple herself, who had decided to redo the album after voicing her displeasure over the completed record. Producer Mike Elizondo, who had worked with Eminem and Pink, among others, was called in to remix most of the record's tracks, which focused on the collapse of her relationship with Anderson. The new version of the album, titled Extraordinary Machine, was released to largely positive response, a debut in the Top 10, and a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Album upon its release in 2005.

Apple would remain in the spotlight for the remainder of the 2010s, though largely through charity and tribute singles, as well as collaborations with comedians Zach Galifiniakis and Margaret Cho, which ran contrary to her overly serious public demeanor. But there were also complicated romantic relationships with author Jonathan Ames and an unidentified French photographer, whom Apple claimed to have briefly married during an unspecified period. In 2010, she had begun work on a new record with her touring drummer, Charley Drayton, as producer. Though originally intended for release in 2011, The Idler Wheel , a shortened version of another epic-length title, debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard charts in 2012 and exceptionally strong reviews which praised its spare, percussion-driven arrangements and Apple's lyrics. That same year, Apple's tour to promote the album was interrupted by her arrest for hashish possession at a border stop in Texas where fellow musicians Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson had been stopped in the past. Apple spent the night in jail and resumed her tour, giving a strange speech describing her experiences at a show in Houston. By Paul Gaita