Fiona Apple on the Struggle to Write About an “Endless Barrage of Horrors”

Fiona Apple posted a video to Instagram on Friday, via her friend and roommate Zelda Hallman, in which she addressed her creative silence directly. “I wonder if you’re wondering if I’m even trying to write about what’s going on in the world right now,” she said. “I’m really struggling with it.”

Apple drew a clear line between the personal songwriting that defined her early work and the challenge of writing about external events. “You’re the authority,” she said of self-focused material. But when the subject is other people’s suffering, the stakes shift. “Maybe I’m letting perfect get in the way of good.” She described second-guessing herself constantly, paralyzed by what she called an “endless barrage of horrors.”

The statement wasn’t music’s first since 2020’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Last year, she released “Pretrial (Let Her Go Home),” a song critiquing the cash-bail system, and she co-wrote Cara Delevingne’s “Need It” earlier this year. Still, her main work has remained largely absent. Hallman’s caption listed the injustices Apple has been grappling with—from Gaza to trans rights to the erosion of voting protections—making clear the scope of what she’s trying to process.

Apple didn’t promise a new project. Instead, she offered a rare glimpse of an artist treating public catastrophe not as lyrical material to be mined, but as a weight that resists easy translation into song. “I just don’t want to let anybody down,” she said. “I’m going to keep trying.”