Fiona Apple

Fiona Apple (born September 13, 1977, New York City, New York, U.S.) is an American singer-songwriter whose profoundly personal lyrics helped her ride the wave of alternative rock music in the 1990s to achieve popular success and critical acclaim. Her albums include her debut, Tidal (1996), which went multiplatinum in the United States and spawned the hit single “Criminal”; When the Pawn… (1999); and Fetch the Bolt Cutters (2020).

Family background

Performing is in Apple’s blood. Born Fiona Apple McAfee-Maggart, she is the child of actor Brandon Maggart and singer and actress Diane McAfee and the grandchild of vaudeville and Broadway performer Millicent Green and big-band singer and saxophonist Johnny McAfee. One of her six siblings, Amber, is a cabaret singer who performs under the name Maude Maggart.

Tidal, “Criminal,” and stardom

A classically trained pianist in addition to being a gifted songwriter, McAfee-Maggart showed signs of being a musical prodigy, writing music while in elementary school. At age 12 she was raped; afterward she found that songwriting provided an outlet for processing her trauma. She quit high school to focus on writing and performing music, moving to Los Angeles when she was 16. Soon she was offered a record deal with Sony, and in 1996 she released Tidal under the name Fiona Apple. With its sultry vocals and hard-hitting lyrics, Tidal was a critical darling. The jazzy single “Criminal,” however, broke open the floodgates, propelling the album into the top 20 on the Billboard charts and making Apple a star. Tidal sold three million albums domestically. In 1998 “Criminal” won the Grammy Award for best female rock vocal performance.

Apple gained notoriety for making raw statements about her mental health and for rejecting the adulation of fame at industry events such as the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards ceremony. In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1998, she spoke openly about her struggles with an eating disorder, explaining, “For me, it wasn’t about getting thin, it was about getting rid of the bait that was attached to my body. A lot of it came from the self-loathing that came from being raped at the point of developing my voluptuousness.”

Apple’s honesty was welcomed by many of her fans. Rock critics, however, had a field day with her “Lolita-ish suburban party girl” image (as The New York Times described it), mostly spurred by her provocative music video for “Criminal.” During this time, Apple also entered into high-profile relationships with the magician David Blaine and, later, film director Paul Thomas Anderson.

When the Pawn…

Expressing little interest in being pigeonholed, Apple famously retreated from mainstream rock with her second album, When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King… (1999). The full title is actually a 90-word poem that was at the time of its release the longest album name in history. Its songs mine the emotional depths of relationships and the self-doubt that can hamstring them. Apple’s vulnerability was expressed in lyrics that resonated among her growing fanbase. Rolling Stone described the record, produced by Jon Brion, as “richer, deeper and stronger than Tidal, in every way,” and the album and the song “Paper Bag” garnered her two Grammy nominations.

Extraordinary Machine and The Idler Wheel…

A follow-up album was a long time in production, which led to rumors that Sony initially refused to release it, fearing that it would not be a commercial success. These rumors partly stemmed from snippets of completed songs being leaked online by anonymous fans who hoped to nudge Sony into releasing it. Apple would later clarify that she decided to shelve the album after her label rejected her plans to rerecord the songs. Her fans’ concerns, however, persuaded Sony to back Apple’s decision. Extraordinary Machine was finally released in 2005. Produced by Brion and, later, engineer Mike Elizondo, the album was conceived as a sibling to When the Pawn… but slightly brighter in tone, retaining Apple’s introspective lyrics while adding clearer musical accompaniment. Extraordinary Machine scored Apple another Grammy nomination, for best pop vocal album.

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Apple’s fourth studio album, enigmatically titled The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do, came out in 2012. Apple self-produced the record with the assistance of her drummer, Charley Drayton. The stripped-down songs feature only Apple, a piano, and Drayton’s percussion, and the vulnerability of her vocal performances continued to appeal to her fans. The album reached number three on Billboard’s album chart.

Fetch the Bolt Cutters and soundtrack work

After an eight-year hiatus, Apple released Fetch the Bolt Cutters, named for a bit of dialogue spoken by actress Gillian Anderson in the television police procedural drama The Fall. Recorded at her Los Angeles home with musicians Amy Aileen Wood (drums), Sebastian Steinberg (bass), and Davíd Garza (multi-instrumentals), the album consists of more discordant melodies and cathartic lyrics, and it, too, was enthusiastically embraced by fans and critics. Pitchfork raved, “No music has ever sounded quite like it,” while praising its “wild symphony of the everyday” and Apple’s inclusion of such offbeat sounds as dog barks, jokes, and chants. Fetch the Bolt Cutters won the Grammy in the alternative music album category, and the song “Shameika” won for best rock performance.

Apple has collaborated on the soundtracks for several films and TV shows, contributing songs to Anderson’s Magnolia (1999) and writer-director Judd Apatow’s This Is 40 (2012). Her music has also been featured in such TV series as Joan of Arcadia, Girls, The Handmaid’s Tale, Euphoria, and Ted Lasso.

Charity projects and activism

Apple has often donated the royalties from her singles to charities supporting such causes as the rights of immigrants and Indigenous women and education programs for children in Harlem, New York.

After a five-year break from recording, Apple released the single “Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)” in 2025. The song’s subject matter was inspired by Apple’s volunteer work with Free Black Mamas DMV, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending cash bail and pretrial detention in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Apple included a statement in the song’s music video in which she describes her experience watching bail hearings while volunteering: “Time and time again, I listened as people were taken away and put in jail, for no other reason than that they couldn’t afford to buy their way free. It was particularly hard to hear mothers and caretakers get taken away from the people who depend on them.”