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Fiona Apple’s Gravity
“This world is bulls — t.” That’s what Fiona said of the music industry as she accepted MTV’s award for Best New Artist in 1997. She was 19 and I’d just graduated college. Her debut album, Tidal, was filled with sophisticated music the teenager had written. She was serious. I remember thinking that her honesty and passion would make things hard for her, as mine had for me. I couldn’t have known how right I was.
Fifteen years later I was living in Los Angeles and caught her show of jazz standards at Largo- a sublime evening seared into my memory. At intermission, she locked herself in the bathroom and wept as a line formed outside.
In 2020, just as I decided not to end my life, she released Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Is it odd to say I relate to her more than to any other human?
