Fiona Apple is struggling to write new music due to the world’s “endless barrage of horrors”
In a rare video posted to social media on Friday, the singer said she doesn't want her listeners “to think that I was turning a blind eye or that I didn't see what was going on or that I didn't care.”
Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images
In a rare video posted to social media on Friday, Fiona Apple shared her thoughts on the state of the world and an update on her current creative state. “It’s the middle of the night and I was just writing and I couldn’t sleep,” Apple said in the video, which was posted to Instagram by her friend and roommate Zelda Hallman. “And I just all the sudden got overtaken with this urge to reach out. You haven’t seen me in a while, because this kind of thing, I’m just really, really uncomfortable with it nowadays.”
In the caption for the video, Hallman wrote that Apple has “been trying to find a truthful way to speak to the enormity of what’s happening in the world, from the horror in Gaza and Sudan, to the cruelty being aimed at trans kids, to the assault on women’s bodily autonomy, to the abuse and terror being inflicted on immigrants and their families, to the erosion of voting rights and civil liberties, to the disappearance of Indigenous and Black children.”
“I wonder if you’re wondering if I’m even trying to write about what’s going on in the world right now,” Apple, who hasn’t released a full album of music since 2020’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters, continued, “and I just wanted to tell you that I am. I’m trying.” She went on to admit, though, that she was “really struggling with it,” talking about what she saw as “this fucking endless barrage of horrors,” saying that they made it hard to focus. “Maybe I’m letting perfect get in the way of good,” she reflected. “I just keep second and third and 10th and millionth guessing myself, if I’m the one to say it, or if I’m saying it right. I just didn’t want you to think that I was turning a blind eye or that I didn’t see what was going on or that I didn’t care. I fucking care. I know not everybody’s expecting something from me, but I’m expecting something from me.”
Watch the full video below.
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