Fiona Apple

Alongside the likes of Jewell, Alanis Morissette and Tori Amos, Fiona Apple was part of a wave of smart, kooky, female singer-songwriters who came to prominence in the mid-1990s and brought melodic, off-kilter ballads back into the charts. Born into a musical and theatrical New York family on September 13th, 1977, she was still only 19 when debut album Tidal (1996) went triple platinum, while single “Criminal” won a Grammy Award for Best Female Vocal and was voted as the year's best track by Rolling Stone. Her dramatic piano playing and heart-on-sleeve storytelling brought more success with hit albums When The Pawn... (1999) and Extraordinary Machine (2005) but her uncomfortable relationship with fame and celebrity resulted in a long hiatus. Making a triumphant return in 2012, fourth album The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than The Driver Of The Screw... reached number three in the US charts and was named record of the year by TIME Magazine, Stereogum and Spinner. She wound down her output considerably in the following years, sporadically reemerging with high-profile contributions to an Apple advert and TV show The Affair and also collaborating with indie rock instrumentalist Andrew Bird and indie pop singer King Princess. Her fifth LP, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, eventually arrived in 2020 to universal acclaim, receiving an unprecedented 10/10 rating from Pitchfork and securing several Grammy nominations. Heartwarmingly, her long-lost school friend Shameika, the namesake of the album’s lead single, tracked her down after the song’s release, and the pair reunited later the same year for the hip-hop response song “Shameika Said”.