Fiona Apple gave a sincere statement about where she’s at creatively in a video posted to social media Friday, decrying her inability to write about the “endless barrage of horrors.”
Apple said she had spent a recent night writing and was “overtaken with the urge to reach out” in a video posted to Instagram by her friend and roommate Zelda Hallman.
Apple answered that urge by giving viewers a heartfelt update about the difficulty she’s going through in attempting to write about current events. “I wonder if you’re wondering if I’m even trying to write about what’s going on in the world right now,” she asked before expressing that she’s is trying but is “really struggling with it.”
Writing about yourself is simpler, Apple explained. When creating music that’s personal, “You’re the authority,” and “Nobody can get let down,” she said. But when the subject matter concerns others, the writing process is significantly more difficult for her, and she puts higher expectations on herself. “Maybe I’m letting perfect get in the way of good,” she told viewers.
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With “this fucking endless barrage of horrors it’s hard to focus,” she said, and when she’s able to focus, she keeps second guessing and questioning herself and her creative choices. The last thing Apple wanted people to perceive in her absence is apathy. “I just didn’t want you to think that I was turning a blind eye” or “that I didn’t care,” she said.
She concluded her message with a vulnerable statement about where she is as a musician. “I just don’t want to let anybody down. I’m letting myself down right now, I know that, as an artist,” she said.
“I know that there’s other things to do other than writing songs, and I’m doing what I can elsewhere,” she told views. “But this is my job to show what’s going on. That’s what I want to try to do. I’m going to keep trying.”
While Apple wasn’t specific about the subject matter she’s struggle to write about, Hullman gave more detail in a caption to the video.
“She’s 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, so often met with silence, and to so much more suffering and injustice than can be named or addressed in a single statement.
This is where she is.”
Apple hasn’t all together been missing from her artistic endeavors. She co-wrote the Cara Delevingne song “Need It,” which was released in June. Last year, she released “Pretrial (Let Her Go Home),” a song highlighting the effects of the cash-bail system on women, girls, and, in particular, Black mothers, marking her first new music since 2020.