520 Etc.: Extraordinary Machine
This year’s tour, supported and opened by singer David Garza, will be in celebration of Fiona Apple's long-awaited third album – Extraordinary Machine, proving just how "extraordinary" this young artist is. Expect a healthy dose of tracks from Extraordinary Machine and a few surprise covers, as well as the captivating sounds of Garza. Beside being extraordinary, Fiona is also a gutsy gal. A feature in Rolling Stone described Fiona as saying how “being involved in planning a tour is too nerve-racking” and so is now “taking the hands-off approach for her summer trek by not even planning her own set list.”
Produced by Mike Elizondo (Dr. Dre, Eminem and 50 Cent) and co-produced by Brian Kehew, Extraordinary Machine was finally released by Epic Records on October 4, 2005 after a tangled six year-long road involving multiple producers, business struggles and personal changes.
The final product, however, was just as incredibly unique as the original, with a bundle of sensual and intense songs about identity and love. Her biography touts her new music as “complicated songs for complicated sentiments.”
Fiona herself claims she is content and excited about the final version of Extraordinary Machine, describing each song as “its own little world.”
"Every song that I write, I feel like I'm in a different world. And with this album, because it's been such a long period of time, I didn't want everything to sound one particular way," she says on her official Web site.
Extraordinary Machine
1 Extraordinary Machine
2 Get Him Back
3 O' Sailor
4 Better Version Of Me
5 Tymps (The Sick in the Head Song)
6 Parting Gift
7 Window
8 Oh Well
9 Please Please Please
10 Red Red Red
11 Not About Love
12 Waltz (Better Than Fine)
Fiona Apple’s highly recognized albums and entrancing videos have produced plentiful praises from fans and the music industry alike. Here’s a list of just a few of Fiona’s many accolades praising Extraordinary Machine:
Two MTV Music Video Awards
Two Grammy nominations
Sales of over 5 million albums around the world
The New York Times: #1 Best Album Of The Year
Time Out New York: #3 Top 10 Best Albums Of The Year List
New York Post: #30 Top 205 Best Songs To Download List ("Get Him Back")
New York: #2 Top 3 Best Albums Of 2005 List
Details: Best Albums Of The Year List
PASTE Magazine: Best Albums Of The Year List
Los Angeles Times: Best Album Of The Year Critic's Choice List, #8 Top 10 Most Memorable Songs List ("Waltz (Better Than Fine)")
Los Angeles Times says: "There's an almost irresistible feel-good spirit to this refreshing tale of self-affirmation, served up in a pop-cabaret style reminiscent of the rich sophistication of French chanteuse Edith Piaf."
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
Extraordinary Machine came in at #1 in Entertainment Weekly's 'Best of 2005' Music List! They say, "It's the most paradoxically uplifting music of the year."
BLENDER YEAR END ISSUE 2005
Extraordinary Machine came in at #2 in Blender's 50 Greatest CDs of 2005 list (January/February 2006 issue)! Other Blender Year-End accolades:
#35 Top 100 Greatest Songs Of The Year List "Get Him Back"
Reader's Poll Album Of The Year Nomination
Reader's Poll Hero Of The Year
ROLLING STONE YEAR END ISSUE 2005
Fiona Apple was featured in Rolling Stone's year end issue (December 29, 2005 - January 12, 2006), with Extraordinary Machine placing #4 on their Top 50 Records of 2005 Year-End list!
SPIN YEAR END ISSUE 2005
Extraordinary Machine came in at #9 on Spin's January 2006 issue Top 40 Best Albums of 2005 list!
The World Café will broadcast a session with Fiona Apple on August 31st, 2006. Listen to it online!
Her video for “O’Sailor” off of Extraordinary Machine won for Best Direction of a Female Artist and Best Hair at the 15th Annual MVPA (Music Video Production Association) Awards on May 11, 2006.
Watch "O'Sailor" and Fiona's other music videos here.
After almost a decade since Apple, now 28, came out with the astonishing Grammy-winning Tidal and astonished listeners with her unbelievable voice for a 19-year old, and controversial video for “Criminal,” Apple established herself as an intriguing and visionary singer/songwriter with .Fiona Apple established herself as a visionary singer/songwriter.
Tidal
1 Sleep To Dream
2 Sullen Girl
3 Shadowboxer
4 Criminal
5 Slow Like Honey
6 The First Taste
7 Never Is A Promise
8 The Child Is Gone
9 Pale September
10 Carrion
Fiona's 1999 follow up album “When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing 'Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and if You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and if You Fall It Won't Matter, 'Cuz You'll Know That You're Right,” which Fiona described as a originally a simple “pep-talk to her self.”
Recognized as the longest album title by the Guiness Book of World Records, “When the Pawn…” exemplified Fiona’s “edgy and elegant musical genius,” taking Fiona on an even further road to musical maturation with honest and unique tones and moods in every song including her renowned singles “Paper Bag,” a song about a beautiful bird she once saw in the sky that was actually just a paper bag, “Get Gone” and “Fast As You Can,” one of her edgiest and fast-paced (hence the name) songs to date.
When the Pawn
1 On The Bound
2 To Your Love
3 Limp
4 Love Ridden
5 Paper Bag
6 A Mistake
7 Fast As You Can
8 The Way Things Are
9 Get Gone
10 I Know
When Apple finished touring for “When the Pawn,” however, she wasn't immediately inpspired to start writing songs again, as she described in an exclusive iTunes interview.
"I had little bits and pieces of songs that will lie around forever unless somebody gives me a kick in the ass," Apple says. "I don't really worry about it when I don't feel creative, because it always happens in seasons. Since I started playing piano, there would always be a year or two when I wouldn't play at all. Or there would be an art season, where it's not about making music but about making art. But when I'm not in it, I'm not in it, and I believe it's just as important to have those spells in your life. Everything contributes to what you produce."
She was, however, having weekly lunches with producer Brion, she realized it was time to enter into the “music season” again.
Thus in 2002, with the “bits and pieces of songs” she had, they began sessions at Ocean Way studios, eventually transferred to the Paramour in LA's Silver Lake region where they continued recording into 2003.
But Apple said that she didn't really know what she wanted to do.
“I started feeling panicky, like do I want to do this at all, be a part of this again? So I kind of mentally checked out of those sessions."
Then came a time that Fiona said felt like “somebody took her diary.” Someone leaked the unfinished tracks to the Internet.
"I started thinking, now I'm never going to be able to do this the right way," Apple says.
With the release of her unfinished tracks, came the release of rumors about the sinister causes for her album not being released. Some loyal fans, perhaps misguided by these rumors, even ‘stuck it to the man’ through the freezing cold New York City streets in protest and impatience fervor. They all wanted to hear their Fiona, darn it!, not wait as the corporate world asked her to “fix” her songs to a more “mainstream” sound. However, Fiona has maintained that the true reasons for her album not being released lies with her own personal wishes and no one else’s. She said in many interviews that she didn’t feel satisfied with the album the way it was, and although she’s still “proud of the original version,” that at the time she just didn’t have it in her to make the album she wanted to make.
Following the Internet leak, everyone life was at an uncomfortable and uncertain standstill. Apple, contemplating her future, even applied for an internship working with children and farm animals in upstate New York.
"I was really almost to the point where I was going to have a completely different kind of life," she says. She eventually, (and fortunate for us fans), returned to the studio and finish what she had started.
Producer Mike Elizondo entered the scene, who handed Fiona rough solutions, which Apple says inspired her so much she called her Dad. Alas the epic Extraordinary Machine found its contented finish. The title track, though, was hardly touched and now remains in its original Birthday suit. Apple says describes exactly how she “feels about herself,” with such lyrics as “I seem to you to seek a new disaster every day. You deem me due to clean my view and be at piece and lay. I mean to prove I mean to move in my own way, and say, I've been getting along for long before you came into the play.”
“So what has Fiona Apple learned from the making of Extraordinary Machine?” asks the biography on her Web site. “She's gained perspective on just where her music fits into her life. She's seen the passion and loyalty of her fans. From all the twists and turns this phase of her life has taken, she's learned, in the end, something like maturity-at least, her own, free-spirited version.”
"I've had a surprisingly Zen feeling about this whole thing," she says. "I kind of always knew that it would work out somehow."
