Best National Solo Act

Fiona Apple

Fiona Apple is a bag full of contradictions. The press loves to paint the young singer as mentally unstable and full of angst. But the seemingly fragile girl with the haunting, soulful, guttural voice is not afraid to speak her mind, as a national audience learned last September during her strident acceptance speech at the MTV Music Awards. She cited Maya Angelou as her inspiration while instructing the children watching the broadcast that the music world was crap and not to model their lives on what stars did.

Apple started her journey into the music industry upon moving from her native New York to live with her father in Los Angeles; she finished high school and cut a demo of songs that she had been writing since her youth. However, it was not until she returned home to New York to visit her mother that a copy of the demo was given to producer Andy Slater, the man who would not only engineer her debut CD, Tidal, but manage her as well. At 18, this waif-like figure with a large mouth has become an almost overnight success with Tidal hitting the Top 40 album charts while "Shadowboxer," "Criminal," and "Sleep To Dream," received airplay on MTV and VH-1 and radio stations that could not get enough of her haunting voice. Backed by slight guitar riffs and eerie melodies that encompass all the highs and lows of life, from pain, love, and longing to vulnerability, rejection, and success, Apple's songs are poetry about the positive and negative experiences of life. Hopefully, the gush of attention that she has been given this year will not affect the integrity of the recording of her next album due out sometime next year.

-- Kelly O'Connor