NEW YORK - Fiona Apple has no apologies. The brash 20-year-old
singer's impromptu slam of the recording industry's image-making
machinery during her acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music
Awards raised more than a few eyebrows, but she couldn't care le
ss. "I just had something on my mind and I just said it," Apple
says in the Jan. 22 Rolling Stone magazine. "And that's really the
foreshadowing of my entire career and my entire life. When I have
something to say, I'll say it."
At the September awards ceremony, Apple was named best new artist,
an honor she thought would go to Hanson. Surprised when she was
named, the edgy singer-songwriter has said the award made her feel
like "a sell-out." Completely unprepared at the podium, she said to
her fans, in part: "You shouldn't model your life about what you
think that we think is cool and what we're wearing and what we're
saying, and everything. Go with yourself."
Critics have called Apple ungrateful, but she says absolute honesty
is essential for her emotional survival. A pre-teen rape victim who
takes medication for depression, Apple says the sexual assault
remains the defining event of her life.
"It's funny, because I don't think I maybe would be here," Apple
says when asked where she'd be if the rape hadn't happened. "But
then again, I don't think I would need to be here." What? "I want
everyone to understand me," Apple continues. "I want to b e friends
with everybody. I want everybody to know how I feel, and I want
them to respect it and to think that it's OK. And that's why I'm
sitting here... I think it was my desperation that drove me to have
the will to do it."
By The Associated Press