In the aftermath of Alanis, the airwaves were crawling with troubled ingénues singing tragic ballads about their haunted eyes, but somehow Fiona Apple stood out as a bad, bad girl. Apple's husky voice and jazzy melodies give an unexpected weight to her confessions on Tidal, as the nineteen-year-old New York art waif broods over adolescent malaise in off-kilter, insinuating piano ballads like "Never Is a Promise." She also comes up with a knockdown theme song in the anomalously hard-rocking "Criminal," the anthem of a young woman who's been careless with a delicate man and even more careless with her delicate self.

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