fiona apple: making mistakes

Sasha Frere-Jones hid this little interview away on his pretty amazing blog:

"SFJ: If you could say to somebody why you aren’t happy with the “Criminal” video, if you were talking to a kid, what would you say to them? What makes you unhappy about it?

FA: The problem that I have with it is not even that I think it’s an offensive video; it’s that I know how I felt at the time, and I know that I caved in to what people wanted me to do. I thought that they weren’t going to like me if I didn’t. Nothing that you do will ever feel good if you let people convince you that you have no choice. When I think of the video, I just think of me being weak and I don’t like that. I think that [director] Mark Romanek’s whole approach was that it was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. That’s a really convenient thing to say when you want the girl in her underwear. But it doesn’t come off that way, because I was miserable. I was thinking about this: Why do I have this reputation for being so sullen and sad? I was thinking about when I started doing photo shoots again. I was so miserable in all the photo shoots that when everybody was taking a picture of me, I was miserable.

SFJ: You looked pretty miserable in the video.

FA: I was miserable. That’s why it doesn’t come off as tongue-in-cheek. But do I have any advice? No, I really don’t want to give any advice to a nineteen-year-old, because I want a nineteen-year-old to make mistakes and to learn from them. Make mistakes, make mistakes, make mistakes, make mistakes, make mistakesjust make sure that they’re your mistakes. Because they just feel a lot less crappy, and they’re just easier to get past."


You can read Sasha's review of Ms. Apple's new album in the New Yorker: here.

Comments

kid oakland said…
I haven't heard the new album or the leaked one...and actually I've been listening to some music a reader sent me...which I'll write about later.

But I got introduced to Fiona Apple, who, I know is not to everyone's taste...but who is just fine with me...in what had to be the perfect way. It was this David Byrne-hosted PBS thing....like "Live from 54th Street" and I had no idea who she was...

and, damn, she was just more than intense, just commanded the stage. I went around for a day or two afterwords asking people...do you know who this Fiona Apple is?

Of course, I didn't have MTV. They were like....you mean the "girl running around stepping on guys in her underwear?"

Ah.

(Back in the day we listened to Kate Bush...lol.)
Anonymous said…
Awesome: "Nothing that you do will ever feel good if you let people convince you that you have no choice."

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