Admittedly, this is an odd pick for me. It is one of those songs that got my attention because of the instrumentation of the song and the unique voice of the singer. It was a song that would play on the radio on one of the stations I would listen to while driving and delivering for the EDS mailroom in between radio gigs. The intro had such an interesting sound to it.

I knew nothing of the artist, never saw the video, and only learned more about the song and the complex life of Fiona Apple recently. She has used real life and events from her life to express some very deep songs. To say that she has experienced a lot of hurt in her life is an understatement. She used music and writing to get through some tough stuff.

It was on this day in 1996 that 18 year old Fiona Apple released her debut album, Tidal. She got her record deal before she ever played live. A musical prodigy, she was writing songs by the time she was 11. Her high-school years were rough: she lived with her mom in New York City (her parents, never married, split when she was 4), and she felt like an outcast.

Music was her retreat – her way of expressing her internal struggles and making sense of the world. When she realized she would have to choose a profession at some point, she made a demo tape with three of the songs she wrote. Her friend gave it to a music publicist she was babysitting for, and Apple landed her deal. Less than a year later, Tidal was released with one song from the demo, “Never Is A Promise,” on the track list.

Fiona typically works by writing songs that are extensions of her journals, baring her soul for all to hear in a process that can be years in the making. “Criminal” is an outlier: she claims she wrote the song in just 45 minutes to prove she could, and to give her record label (Work, a division of Sony) the hit song they were after.

She sprung into action after one of her friends was giving her grief about how she wasn’t writing more songs. “The next time you see me, I’m gonna have a new song,” she told her. “I can force myself to do the work, but only if someone is right up behind me,” she explained.

With the weight of Sony Music behind her, the highly introverted Apple set out to promote the album with a series of showcases, interviews and performances. It quickly became clear that she will speak unflinchingly about the heartbreaks and horrors that inspired many of the songs on the album. One story she tells over and over is the one about being raped outside her apartment when she was 12 which became the subject of her song, “Sullen Girl.”

In the summer of 1997, she joined the Lilith Fair and in September, she made her mark at the MTV Video Music Awards. In her acceptance speech for Best New Artist (for her song, “Sleep to Dream”), she told the audience, “This world is bulls–t, and you shouldn’t model your life about what you think that we think is cool.” That moment went viral and the record company took advantage of it. Sony responded by releasing “Criminal” as a single, taking advantage of the wave of publicity. The song debuted at #28 on October 4, and peaked at #21 on November 29. The Tidal album went on to sell over 3 million copies.

Fiona has said that the song is about “feeling bad for getting something so easily by using your sexuality” and therefore making her a “criminal.” Depression and self-loathing were a common theme in Fiona’s songwriting at the time. She told Interview magazine: “It’s psychologically and chemically impossible for me to be happy.”

The video was quite controversial and all of the attention that it got (positive and negative) pushed the song onto the pop chart, giving Fiona the only Hot 100 hit of her career. Tidal took off, but the downforce of all the media attention and public appearances finally wore her down, and in March 1998, she canceled her tour.

Apple performed this “Criminal” at the Grammy Awards in 1998, where she won Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for the song. She was nominated for Best New Artist, but lost to her Lilith Fair tour mate Paula Cole.

Source: songfacts.com