Fiona Apple's last album was Fetch the Bolt Cutters, widely considered one of the defining albums of the decade, especially when it was released during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. That was over six years ago, though long waits don't deter her fans; her albums have become increasingly infrequent, appearing in 1997, 1999, 2005, 2012, and 2020. With that data, fans might presume a follow-up would be ready in 2029, a nine-year-wait following an eight-year one, a seven-year-one, and a six-year one. But Apple herself has now vocalized that she's struggling to write. In a video posted on her roommate and best friend Zelda Hallman's Instagram account, Apple goes into detail about the dystopia we're navigating and the increasingly difficulty of trying to write about it all as an artist:

It's the middle of the night and I was just writing and I couldn't sleep. And I just all the sudden got overtaken with this urge to reach out. You haven't seen me in a while, because this kind of thing, I'm just really, really uncomfortable with it nowadays. But I just find myself really wanting to reach out, just to people who care about what I'm doing, because I wonder if you're if you're wondering if I'm even trying to write about what's going on in the world right now. And I just wanted to tell you that I am. I'm trying. I'm really struggling with it. If you're writing about yourself, it's one thing. Nobody can tell you that you're saying it wrong, nobody can get let down. You're the authority. But when it concerns what's happening to other people, it just becomes so important.

Maybe I'm letting perfect get in the way of good. But even when I did pretrial I had at least years, thousands of cases that I had firsthand witness, I felt like I had a handle on that. Even then, I didn't know if I was the right person to write about it. I didn't know if I was saying it all right. I kind of felt I wasn't. I couldn't say it all. But now this fucking endless barrage of horrors, it's hard to focus, and when you do focus, I just keep second and third and 10th and millionth guessing myself, if I'm the one to say it, or if I'm saying it right. I just didn't want you to think that I was turning a blind eye or that I didn't see what was going on or that I didn't care. I fucking care. Or that I'm not trying and I am trying and I don't know if I'm going to succeed, I don't know.

But I just don't want to let anybody down. I'm letting myself down right now, I know that, as an artist, because I feel like that's our job. I know that there's other things to do other than writing songs and I'm doing what I can elsewhere, but this is my job, to show what's going on. That's what I want to try to do. I'm going to keep trying. Anyway, I'm going to stop babbling at you. This is just for people who care what I'm doing, by the way. I know this is not important to everybody. I know everybody's not expecting something from me but I'm expecting something from me.

Hallman's caption on the video reads:

Fiona gave me this video to share. She's been trying to find a truthful way to speak to the enormity of what's happening in the world, from the horror in Gaza and Sudan, to the cruelty being aimed at trans kids, to the assault on women's bodily autonomy, to the abuse and terror being inflicted on immigrants and their families, to the erosion of voting rights and civil liberties, to the disappearance of Indigenous and Black children, so often met with silence, and to so much more suffering and injustice than can be named or addressed in a single statement. This is where she is.

This said, Apple did just compose the opening theme music for Anya Taylor-Joy's TV series Lucky. Watch the trailer for that below, as well as Apple's video statement on Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DansYv7uwG3/