Fiona Apple

Early life and education

Fiona Apple McAfee-Maggart came into the world on September 13, 1977, in New York City. Her mother, Diane McAfee, was a singer, and her father, Brandon Maggart, was an actor; they met while performing in the Broadway show Applause. Her father hails from Tennessee, and through him she carries Melungeon ancestry. On her mother’s side, her grandparents were dancer Millicent Green and big band vocalist Johnny McAfee.

Her sister, Amber, performs cabaret as Maude Maggart, and she has a half-brother, actor Garett Maggart. Apple spent her childhood in Morningside Gardens in Morningside Heights with her mother and sister, but summers were with her father in Los Angeles. She attended St. Hilda’s & St. Hugh’s School, a private Episcopal school, and later Alexander Hamilton High School, along with periods of homeschooling. While learning piano, she would often convert guitar tablature into standard notation, and eventually she started playing along to jazz standards, discovering Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, who became key influences.

From a young age, Apple has dealt with obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and anxiety, and she has also received a diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder. When she was 12, she was raped outside her family’s apartment in Harlem. After that, she developed an eating disorder, deliberately keeping herself thin because she saw her growing body as “bait” for predators. She has said she was not anorexic but rather deeply depressed and self-loathing, and her OCD later evolved into avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, where food had to be a certain color or shape.

Following the rape, she took Model Mugging self-defense classes, but still suffered panic attacks on her walk home from school, leading her to live with her father for a year in Los Angeles, where she attended Alexander Hamilton High School for her second year. In a 2000 interview, Apple stated she did not write songs about the rape trauma, calling it “a boring pain.” In 2020, she expressed regret over that comment, saying she was angry at herself for saying it, especially because young girls were listening.

Career

In 1994, Fiona Apple handed a demo tape with three songs—"Never Is a Promise," "Not One of Those Times," and "He Takes a Taxi"—to a friend who babysat for music publicist Kathryn Schenker. Schenker passed it to Sony Music executive Andy Slater, who was impressed and signed her. Her debut album, Tidal, came out in 1996 on Work and Columbia Records. Written after a breakup with her first boyfriend, it sold 2.7 million copies and went triple platinum in the U.S. The third single, "Criminal," cracked the Billboard Hot 100 Top 40, and its Mark Romanek-directed video aired on MTV.

Other singles included "Shadowboxer," "Sleep to Dream," and "Never Is a Promise." At the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, Apple won Best New Artist for "Sleep to Dream." She later cut short the last 21 dates of her tour, citing personal family problems. In 1997, she met filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson at a photoshoot, and they dated until 2002.

Philanthropy

In June 2019, Fiona Apple committed to giving two years of income from TV and film uses of "Criminal" to the While They Wait fund, which supports refugees with essentials, legal help, and immigration costs. By 2020, Scott Hechinger of While They Wait reported to Vulture that Apple had contributed $90,000, enough to assist 15 families. Starting in 2021, she has volunteered as a court watcher for Courtwatch PG. A year after her first pledge, in June 2020, she promised two years of earnings from "Shameika" placements to the Harlem Children's Zone.

Political views and activism

Fiona Apple’s political activism is well known. In August 2020, she voiced a video from Brooklyn Defender Services, We Have Rights, and WITNESS that instructed people on how to record Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and arrests, aiming to inform immigrants and onlookers of their rights during such encounters. On May 7, 2025, she put out the song “Pretrial (Let Her Go Home),” which came from her work as a volunteer court observer with CourtWatch PG and Free Black Mamas DMV Bailout.

Did You Know?

• Apple has a contralto vocal range.
• For Extraordinary Machine, she won an Esky Music Award for Best Songbird.