A trickle of promising leaks whetted fans’ appetites, but radio silence from the label about a release date led to wide speculation that the third Fiona album had been shelved. The pair began work on a follow-up to 1999’s When the Pawn … in the early 2000s, matching Apple’s sharpening lyricism and classical pop melodicism with Brion’s playful orchestral underpinnings. The three-year journey to the release of 2005’s Extraordinary Machine was an obstacle course for Apple and her friend and collaborator Jon Brion, also known for his work with Macy Gray, Aimee Mann, Kanye West, and Mac Miller, as well as the soundtracks to films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I Heart Huckabees, and Punch Drunk Love. I’m still learning to be as chill about strife as “Extraordinary Machine” plays at, to see the quest to be “cool” as the act of futility and wasted time “ Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is telling me it was all along. It took time to see, say, “Carrion” - “My feel for you, boy, is decaying right in front of me, like the carrion of a murdered prey” - as a piece of deliberate melodrama. Here was someone who understood the intensity of teenage feelings but who had gained the necessary distance to view them as sort of silly. Back in 1996, when I was using Tidal lyrics to stoke the fires of doomed crushes on classmates, Fiona’s music was a light at the end of the tunnel of high school. It’s a story of an artist whose music has grown somehow a little more pure each step of the way, whose catalog is a breadcrumb trail leading the intrepid listener to startling revelations about love and self-sufficiency. The list below is a list of Fiona albums ordered by degrees of greatness. I should start by saying that in nearly 25 years of listening to Fiona Apple, I’ve never heard a bad album and have scarcely encountered a bad song. ET to hear Rolling Stone Music Now broadcast live from SiriusXM’s studios on Volume, channel 106.Apple’s catalog is a breadcrumb trail leading the intrepid listener to startling revelations about love and self-sufficiency. The podcast is nominated for a Webby Award – please vote for us right here.ĭownload and subscribe to our weekly podcast, Rolling Stone Music Now, hosted by Brian Hiatt, on iTunes or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts), and check out two years’ worth of episodes in the archive, including in-depth, career-spanning interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Halsey, Ice Cube, Neil Young, the National, Questlove, Julian Casablancas, Sheryl Crow, Johnny Marr, Scott Weiland, Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac, Elvis Costello, Donald Fagen, Phil Collins, Alicia Keys, Stephen Malkmus, Sebastian Bach, Tom Petty, Kelly Clarkson, Pete Townshend, Bob Seger, the Zombies, Gary Clark Jr., and many more - plus dozens of episodes featuring genre-spanning discussions, debates, and explainers with Rolling Stone’s critics and reporters. Last week on Rolling Stone Music Now, we interviewed Dua Lipa. To hear the entire episode right now, press play below or download and subscribe on iTunes or Spotify. Meanwhile, Shaffer and Spanos explain why they both rank Tidal at the bottom of Apple’s catalog, despite being fans of the album. The episode goes track-by-track through the new album, while exploring how Apple overcame early misconceptions and sexist criticism to become one of the most consistent and inventive artists of her generation. In the new episode of Rolling Stone Music Now, Claire Shaffer, Brittany Spanos, and Rob Sheffield join host Brian Hiatt for a deep dive into the entire catalog of Fiona Apple, from 1996’s Tidal to this year’s masterpiece, Fetch the Bolt Cutters(which Shaffer reviewed in April).
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