Fiona Apple's 1997 MTV Speech: This World Is Bullshit

Watch this. I didn't prepare a speech, and I'm sorry, but I'm glad that I didn't because I'm not gonna do this like everybody else does it.

Um, 'cause everybody that I should be thanking, I'm really sorry, but I have to use this time. See, Maya Angelou said that we, we as human beings at our best can only create co-- opportunities, and I'm gonna use this opportunity the way that I wanna use it.

So what I wanna say is, um, everybody out there that's watching, everybody that's watching this world, this world is bull, and you shouldn't model your life. Wait a second.

You shouldn't model your life about what you think that we think is cool and what we're wearing and what we're saying and everything. Go with yourself.

If Fiona Apple put her entire career on the line that night, it's because she couldn't keep inside all the terrible things she had seen.

What we just saw is a nineteen-year-old woman walking on stage with an MTV award and telling national television that this world is bullshit.

You can see her eyes locked on the camera, her voice shaking.

She knows what she's about to do. You can't forget she was nineteen years old.

Her first album had just dropped. She was at the peak of everything she was building, except that's where everything breaks when she starts to speak.

She doesn't thank anyone. She quotes Maya Angelou.

She tells people not to copy what celebrities wear, say, represent.

Go with yourself. She repeats it like she knew they were about to cut the feed.

That was a deliberate choice in front of the cameras.

Since that night, Fiona Apple has basically disappeared.

No Grammys, no invitations to the big ceremonies, no red carpets, like someone decided that's where it stopped for her. Some will say she chose isolation.

Others will say that silence was arranged long before any decision she made herself.