Fiona Apple’s Survival Guide to Isolation
“Happy quarantine,” Fiona Apple, the ferocious 42-year-old songwriter, said with a matter-of-fact raise of her eyebrows in a recent video message. “This time means nothing to me really, personally, because nothing’s changed.”
She doesn’t seem to be exaggerating. When Fiona Apple McAfee-Maggart was a teen singer on the cusp of fame in the ’90s, her mom suggested that her stage name be “Fiona Lone” because she just loved to be alone. With every sporadic interview she’s given in the past decade, Apple has appeared to become more deeply fortressed in her Los Angeles bungalow. Her 1996 hit, “Criminal,” returned to the spotlight because of a scene in the movie Hustlers last year. Apple didn’t go out to see it.
But the best proof of her reclusiveness is in her saw-toothed, percussive show tunes. She has snarled trespass warnings (in 1999: “Get gone!”), sloganeered for stasis (2005: “Keep us steady, steady going nowhere”), and interrogated that the original plan was a fall release. The record’s title, , and sound—feverish, kitchen-sink jams—seem apt for this stay-indoors spring. “I’ve been in here too long,” she murmurs on the title track. Objects that could be pots and pans bang in the background. Dogs bark. She wants someone to bust her out. Who can’t relate?
