page_title: Fiona Apple
section_title: 2011–2018: The Idler Wheel..., tour, and legal troubles
hierarchical_section_title: Fiona Apple / Life and career / 2011–2018: The Idler Wheel..., tour, and legal troubles
caption_attribution_description: English: Fiona Apple performing live at the Fillmore in Miami Beach, Florida; September 30, 2012.
context_page_description: Fiona Apple McAfee-Maggart is an American singer-songwriter, pianist, and poet. An eight-time Grammy Award nominee and one-time winner, her albums have reached the top five on the U.S. chart in four consecutive decades.
  The youngest daughter of actor Brandon Maggart, Apple was born in New York City but was raised alternating between New York and her father's home in Los Angeles. Classically trained on piano as a child, she began composing her own songs when she was eight years old. Her debut album, Tidal, containing songs written when she was 17, was released in 1996 and received a Grammy Award for Best Female Vocal Rock Performance for the single "Criminal". She followed with When the Pawn..., produced by Jon Brion, which was also critically and commercially successful and was certified platinum.
  For her third album, Extraordinary Machine, Apple again collaborated with Brion, and began recording the album in 2002. However, Apple was reportedly unhappy with the production and opted not to release the record, leading fans to protest Epic Records, erroneously believing that the label was withholding its release.
context_section_description: In late 2010, Billboard published an article stating that Apple was planning on releasing a new album in spring 2011, with musician Michelle Branch claiming to have heard some of the new tracks. Drummer Charley Drayton also told Modern Drummer magazine that he was co-producing the record. However, the album was not released in the spring and Billboard reported later that Epic was not aware of a record. Apple delayed the album's release until 2012, explaining that she was waiting "until her label found a new president and that she didn't want her work to be mishandled amid corporate disarray." In January 2012, after its new record label head, LA Reid hinted at new music from Apple, Epic Records announced that the album would be released later in the year. Apple announced performances at the South by Southwest Festival and a spring 2012 tour soon after.
  The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do, Apple's fourth studio album, was released on June 19, 2012, in the United States. It received critical acclaim. According to an article in American Songwriter, "The Idler Wheel isn't always pretty, but it pulses with life, brutal and true."
  While promoting The Idler Wheel, Apple revealed in a June 2012 interview that she had briefly married an unnamed French photographer, later revealed to be Lionel Deluy, "for complicated reasons" and had a passing liaison with a younger woman. She subsequently gave in-depth interview on Marc Maron's WTF podcast in July, during which she revealed that she has battled obsessive–compulsive disorder throughout her adult life. She also divulged that she had recently decided to quit drinking. On September 19, 2012, Apple was arrested at an internal U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, Texas, and charged with possession of hashish, detaining her en route to a concert in Austin, Texas, at the Hudspeth County Jail. 
  Apple contributed a previously unreleased song entitled "Dull Tool" to the soundtrack of the 2012 Judd Apatow film This Is 40. Another song was recorded for the film but was not used, ending up as the track Cosmonauts on her 2020 album Fetch The Bolt Cutters. In November 2012, Apple wrote a letter to her fans – a scan of which was posted to her website and her Facebook page – postponing the South American leg of her tour due to the health of her dog, Janet. According to the letter, the dog has Addison's disease and has had a tumor "idling in her chest" for two years.
  In September 2013, a Chipotle ad appeared online with a soundtrack of Apple covering "Pure Imagination" from the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The video, which follows a scarecrow as he discovers the truth about factory farming and processed food, was described as "haunted," "dystopian," "bizarre," and "beautiful."
  In 2014, Apple wrote the opening theme, "Container", for the Showtime drama series The Affair. During 2014, Apple also appeared at a number of performances by Blake Mills, including in New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts, during his tour in support of his second full-length album, Heigh Ho. The pair first publicly collaborated on an acoustic version of Apple's song "I Know" in 2013. Fiona Apple has collaborated with Andrew Bird, and in 2016, she was featured in the song "Left Handed Kisses" from the album Are You Serious.
  In 2017, she released "Tiny Hands" for the Women's March on Washington.
  In 2018, she joined Shirley Manson at the female-driven Girl School Festival in Los Angeles for a cover of "You Don't Own Me" by Lesley Gore, wearing a white T-shirt with "KNEEL, PORTNOW" written across it in ink. This was considered in response to Grammy head Neil Portnow's heavily criticized comments that women need to "step up" in order to earn more Grammy nods.
caption: Apple performing in Miami Beach, 2012
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