If making great music takes a complicated childhood, it is no wonder that Fiona Apple has been such a success. She was born to two entertainers with her mother being singer Diana McAfee and her father being actor Brandon Maggart. She seemed to always be a pensive child and picked up piano when she was eight. Two personal tragedies led Apple to start writing music in her teens- her parents split up and she was attacked and raped. She went to Los Angeles to live with her father when she was 16 and also recorded a demo tape.

Sony Music was the one to jump at the young star, and she signed with them in 1995. She released her debut album, Tidal, in 1996 and instantly found success with her mature-past-her-years voice and brutally honest songs. The album reached number 15 on the Billboard 200 charts, making her a star at the age of 20. She won a Grammy for her work as well as an MTV Video Music Award, but the latter award was eclipsed by her bizarre acceptance speech. Her next release featured a title that was 90 words long and started with When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King. The album did even better than her first release and climbed to number 13 on the Billboard 200.

Apple stepped back from her whirlwind music-making schedule and took the next six years developing her next album. There was news even before the album was released in 2005 because it was leaked onto the internet. Apple redid many of the tracks for the true release, and Extraordinary Machine made it to number seven on the Billboard 200 chart. Like her fans hoped, Apple was back to provide the same talent she had nearly a decade earlier when she started her career.