‘Criminal’: When Fiona Apple decided to “do the exploiting myself”
Since the mid-1990s, Fiona Apple has become one of music’s most defiant and uncompromising voices, consistently creating music regardless of its commercial appeal. Refusing to follow trends, Apple has crafted an idiosyncratic sound, her smart and precise lyricism at the centre of her work. As a child, the musician classically trained in piano, later learning jazz standards, which ultimately led her to discover artists such as Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday.
As a teenager, Apple passed one of her demo tapes to a friend who babysat for a music publicist. The tape made its way into the hands of Sony Music executive Andy Slater, and he signed her to a record deal. In 1996 and aged 18, Apple released her debut album, Tidal. Two years later, she was nominated for ‘Best New Artist’ at the Grammys, although she took home the ‘Best Female Vocal Rock Performance’ award for one of the album’s singles, ‘Criminal’.
This track became one of Apple’s only commercially successful hits and, to this day, remains her only release to have earned a spot on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 21. On ‘Criminal’, Apple sings about exploiting a man for her own personal gain, opening with the lines: “I’ve been a bad, bad girl/ I’ve been careless with a delicate man”. Discussing the track on a fan club forum in 1997, Apple wrote: “It’s about the trouble in wielding the double-edged sword of female sexuality. The thin line between sweet seduction and subversive manipulation. How come I feel like a ‘Bad, bad girl’ when all I did was have a night of fun? Just cause a girl gets her kick in bed, don’t mean she’s a victim, or a slut, or a whore.”
To accompany the song, Apple appeared in a controversial music video directed by Mark Romanek, who had previously worked on videos for Nine Inch Nails and Madonna. The barely legal singer strips down to her underwear and wanders around a seedy-looking house, accompanied by other anonymous half-naked bodies. Apple sports a dissociative look, despite Romanek’s original plan to have the singer posing with more enthusiasm: “We wanted something blatantly erotic,” he claimed.
In 1997, Apple explained the music video to MTV: “I’m treating the audience that is watching this video the same way the character in the song treats a man: ‘Look at me, look how pretty I am. I don’t have to give you anything else because look how pretty I am. And look how successful I am, look how much power I can get just by letting this light shine on me in a certain way.'”
The song and music video see Apple embrace the stereotype of a seductive young woman. She stated: “I decided if I was going to be exploited, then I would do the exploiting myself”. When she realised that the wardrobe for the shoot was pretty much just underwear, Apple said: “All I can think is ‘I’m a teenage girl. If I’m in my underwear and everybody sees it and tells me it looks great, it makes me feel good, and I’m not going to argue.'”
However, since then, Apple has revealed that she is not a fan of the music video. She told the Washington Post: “Forget the fact that I was in my underwear, I thought that it was cheesy. I didn’t look like myself. It’s kind of ruined the song for me. No offence to Mark Romanek — well, I guess offence — I have total qualms about it now.”
Following the success of ‘Criminal’, Apple has kept a relatively low profile, dedicating her time to making music regardless of its potential for success. It wasn’t until 2020’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters that the musician reached the levels of acclaim that she garnered in the late 1990s. She won her second and third Grammy Awards in 2021, over 20 years since her first win.
