Once Apple returned to Venice Beach, she finally began making headway, rerecording and rewriting songs in uneven intervals, often alone, in her former bedroom. She yowled the vocals over and over, stretching her voice into fresh shapes; like a Dogme 95 filmmaker, she rejected any digital smoothing.
Passages loop and repeat, and there are out-of-the-blue tempo changes. Apple had been writing songs in the same notebooks for years, scribbling new lyrics alongside older ones. I want to spend more time with them! But it seems impossible to ever go out and have fun. Whenever I asked Apple how she created melodies, she apologized for lacking the language to describe her process often with an anxious detour about not being as good a drummer as Wood.
She said that her focus on rhythm had some connections to the O. The new songs were full of spiky, layered wordplay. She found the notion corny. Other songs felt close to hip-hop, with her voice used more for force and flow than for melody, and as a vehicle for braggadocio and insults. Some of the new material was strikingly angry. The title track came to her later; a meditation on feeling ostracized, it jumps between lucidity and fury.
They took turns recalling their love affair, which began in , when Apple attended a performance by Ames at the Moth, the storytelling event, in New York. For years, Ames had written candid, funny columns in the New York Press about sex and his psychological fragilities, a history that appealed to Apple.
Then, step by step, the conversation hit the skids. The turn came when Ames started offering Apple advice on knee pain that was keeping her from walking Mercy—a result, she believed, of obsessive hiking. The pain, he said, was repressed anger. At first, Apple was open to this idea—or, at least, she was polite about it. But, when Ames kept looping back to the notion, Apple went ominously quiet. She curled up, pulling sofa cushions to her chest, her back arched, glaring.
Ames pushed back, alarmed. Her music had pain but also so much joy and redemption, he said. Somehow, the conversation had become a debate about the confessional nature of their work. Was it a good thing for Apple to keep digging up past suffering? Was this labor both therapeutic and generative—a mission that could help others—or was it making her sick?
I love you. Then fuck me, I wasted my fucking life and ruined everything. You should probably go to the beach. He went off to put on his bathing suit. By the time he left, things had eased up.
She hugged him goodbye, looking tiny. The next day, she sent me a video. Then she glanced at the camera slyly, the corner of her mouth pulled up. I just rested my knees for a while. The record dives into such conflicting impulses: she empathizes with other women, rages at them, grows infatuated with them, and mourns their rejection, sometimes all at once. But as an adult she has hung out mainly with men.
The twenty-one-year-old singer Mikaela Straus, a. But Apple has more complicated dynamics with a wider circle of friends, exes, and collaborators. Starting with her first heartbreak, at sixteen, she has repeatedly found herself in love triangles, sometimes as the secret partner, sometimes as the deceived one. Her fascination with women seemed tied, too, to the female bonding of the MeToo era—to the desire to compare old stories, through new eyes. In July, she sent me a video clip of Jimi Hendrix that reminded her of a surreal aspect of the day she was raped: for a moment, when the stranger approached her, she mistook him for Hendrix.
During the assault, she willed herself to think that the man was Hendrix. Years later, however, she found herself hanging out with a man who was a Hendrix fan. Sometimes it recurs through painful flashbacks, sometimes as echoes to be turned into art. But I think that, at that time, I was struggling with my sexuality, and trying to force it into what I thought it should be, and everything felt dirty. Going out with boys, getting high, getting scared, and going home feeling like a dirty wimp was my thing.
Apple came of age in a culture that viewed young men as potential auteurs and young women as commodities to be used, then discarded. A backstory all the better for conjuring the image of a mythical genius at work on an inevitable masterpiece. And during a crisis in which we all feel that same thing, it was inevitable that the concept would eclipse the music itself.
But in the present atmosphere, with physical connection forbidden, every other kind of connection becomes that much stronger. A man singing on his balcony in Rome unites a building, and a woman pounding on a piano in her home in Venice Beach unites the rest of us.
Most of us. In normal times, having the dissenting opinion is a point of pride. Later, in a more studious frame of mind, I persisted. The whole thing just struck me as too insular for how sweepingly it was being lauded. And despite the claims at raw unprocessed sound, those dog barks on the title song are so strategically placed I was more tickled by the actual dogs barking behind the fence I passed while listening to it.
When people talk of genius, when Pitchfork gives the album 10 stars, I hear a glimpse of that here. She was determined to purge her body of any bits a sexual predator might try to grab. As a victim of bullying, a rape survivor, and a celebrity, Apple had been objectified.
Rather than bask in the spotlight, she took the shine off her own glory. Apple would later explain on her official website via Rolling Stone that she "felt like a sellout" who had falsely portrayed herself as "perfect and pretty and rich" in order to play the fame game.
Media outlets responded by verbally cutting her to ribbons. MTV News noted that Apple faced rampant ridicule from multiple directions. NY Rock scathingly described her as "a pretentious and, on occasion, excruciatingly silly human being. Garofalo mocked Apple's eating disorder, derided her as a musician , and made fun of her then-boyfriend David Blaine.
Apple, who was a fan of Garofalo, was brought to tears upon hearing it. Per The Atlantic , websites callously called the singer crazy and would do so for years. It was like a sadistic game of William Tell. People didn't take aim at Apple despite her perceived psychological struggles, but because of them.
Throughout her career, Apple would suffer the slings and arrows of outraged fortune-seekers. She had rejected the norms of celebrity culture, which made her abnormal in the eyes of many critics. Her unbridled honesty only added to the intensity of the attacks on her. Sometimes Apple has responded with barbed creativity.
As the Washington Post observed , the title of her second album -— often referred to as When the Pawn —- is a word rebuttal to a hit piece by a magazine. But she has occasionally lost her composure when feeling stressed by the press and the pressures of celebrity. One of Apple's most ill-famed incidents occurred during a performance at the Roseland Ballroom in Singing became wailing as Apple cursed, cried, and decried critics.
Predictably, reporters treated such low points like a highlight reel. Rolling Stone characterized her ballroom breakdown as a "hissyfit" on a list of her " bad girl moments. Apple shot back, telling "the twits who call themselves journalists" that she completed her performance despite being heckled. Some people dismiss Apple's reactions to stress as the eruptions of an emotional volcano.
New York Magazine branded her a " world-class drama queen. One fact that often goes unmentioned is that she has battled obsessive-compulsive disorder for years. Since childhood she's relied on unconventional rituals to stave off anxiety. Rolling Stone reported that in order to feel safe while home alone, Apple "would roller-skate around the dining-room table 88 times, 88 being the number of keys on the piano.
In an interview with Elle via ABC 7 , Apple revealed, "At its worst, I was compelled to leave my house at three o'clock in the morning and go out in the alley because I just knew that the paper-towel roll I threw in the recycling bin was uncomfortable, like it was lying the wrong way, and I would be down in the garbage.
Thanks to Apple's OCD, years-long gaps separate her albums and live shows. She doesn't drive, has forsaken most social interactions, and seldom travels anywhere. Fame is like a sanctimonious microscope. Every mistake gets blown out of proportion. Take cannabis crime, for example. A Jane Doe getting booked for giving themselves the munchies isn't news. But replace plain Jane with any celebrity, and suddenly a snooze fest becomes the world's most enthralling insomnia.
They were married for 50 years. But to her, she was always mad at this mistress. Our grandfather did it. Your husband cheated on you. She just fell in love with some guy. Then they were together forever afterwards and had a family. So all you can do is listen.
But why did it so long for us all to recognize her genius? Things like that acceptance speech. This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter.
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