The leaked version of Extraordinary Machine caused a fan outcry. People were outraged that such a fine piece of work was being denied them by a label with no ear for art. Fans picketed the studio, sent hundreds of apples in protest and started a campaign called ‘Free Fiona.’
Then Apple broke her silence. She thanked her fans for the emotional response but said shelving the album wasn’t the studio’s call, it was hers. She simply didn’t feel like the Brion-produced tracks made up the album she wanted to release. Instead she was rerecording the album with producer Mike Elizondo and it would be out later that year.
After When the Pawn… came out, Apple sort of disappeared. Then several years later, in a New York Times magazine interview, producer Jon Brion spoke in glowing terms about new tracks they’d recorded for an album to be called Extraordinary Machine. No release date was set.
Choosing another song from When the Pawn… is both a simple and an impossible task. There are no bad choices, but how do you narrow it down to one? Today’s track, ‘The Way Things Are,’ is the first of a trio of songs that finish off the album (the closing track, ‘I Know,’ has 
I was a pretty big fan of Apple’s based on Tidal alone but when her second album came out the whole game changed.
This week’s featured artist, Fiona Apple, is one of my very favorite singer-songwriters… and I stress both halves of that phrase — she is extraordinarily talented as both a singer and a writer of songs. I think a lot of artists tend to excel at one more than the other, but I place her in the top ranks of both categories.
Meet Me In Montauk 