When Fiona Apple was 8, she asked her mother: If you had a good day,
would God give you a bad day afterward? Her mother told her it wasn't so,
but Apple didn't believe her. If you share Apple's hunch, then you may
understand why she has sold 2 million copies of her "Tidal" album, why she
can stand on a stage at the MTV Video Music Awards and say, "This world
is bullshit..." but still bursts into regular 20-year-old giggles at the
simplest thing, and why a generation tired of soft, smiley platitudes
has been drawn to her.
 Apple insists she is not interested in simple, cozy options. "You have
to stop looking for stability in the world and yourself," she says, "because
there is none, and there shouldn't be." She believes that spiders drop down in
front of her when she is sad. She won't use old bottles of shampoo because
the smell reminds her of the past. She thinks that paper clips follow her
wherever she goes, especially the pink ones. When she was young, she thought the
coolest job in the world would be to write Playboy's advice column. She
imagined it like this: "a bunch of smart people that read a lot, sitting
around a big table reading through letters- 'Why is my penis green?'
'How can I hook up my car?'- and all they have to do is find out the
answers."
 One night last year, in St. Louis, Apple got furious at a sexist dolt
in the audience who was shouting, "Without a bra!!" It took a moment for
the rest of the audience, and her band, to convince her that, rather sweetly,
he was actually shouting, "Without a flaw!" If you live like Fiona Apple,
these things will happen.
 ~Chris Heath