"I was so pissed about it. I figured there's nothing worse than compromising on something as important as the way a song comes out."Photo: Sheryl Neilds

Fiona Apple stands in the middle of a darkened soundstage in Burbank, California. She's rehearsing for her first tour in six years, in support of her critically acclaimed new album, Extraordinary Machine. The record and the upcoming shows represent a remarkable comeback, considering the rumors that have been swirling around both Apple and the long-delayed release; still, the diminutive singer-songwriter hardly looks triumphant at the moment. After nervously shuffling from behind a shiny black piano to the single microphone placed center stage, she puts one hand on the mike, jams the other into the pocket of a blue hoodie that's so old it has a gaping hole where the left shoulder used to be, and rocks back and forth slightly, girlishly, as she waits for the musicians to start the song.

It's little wonder that people worry about her: She looks fragile and raw, easily overwhelmed. But then she starts singing and a transformation occurs. Her voice is stunning—rich, full, self-assured and packed with emotion. It's a force in the room and nobody within earshot can focus on anything else.

"I've had a problem my whole life with people being worried about me and just watching me too much," Apple, 28, says during a break. "It's always, 'What are you thinking about? What's going on? Are you sure you're okay? Maybe you should be doing this, maybe you shouldn't be doing that,' and I hate it."

The tour is a short three-week jaunt (it comes to the Nokia theater on Sunday 11) to serve as a warm-up -before she heads out with Coldplay next month. "I'm a little scatterbrained right now," she offers. "But it's good, because if I stop to think that I'm about to go on the road again, I can't believe I'm doing it." Not because she doesn't like touring, but just because, as her father later explains, "Everything affects Fiona."

Fiona Apple McAfee-Maggart, the youngest of seven kids (five were from her father's first marriage), was born to actor Brandon Maggart and singer Diane McAfee, both of whom came from showbiz families, on September 13, 1977, on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Her talent and her eccentricity revealed themselves early on. "She  would put on two or three pairs of socks or underwear and mismatching clothes of various colors and textures that only would suit her for that day," her father recalls. "Then she'd say, 'I can't go to school now, my underwear's itching me!' and she'd have to go change."

A piano prodigy, Apple was composing songs for and about her friends by second grade, and by age 9 or 10 had announced that she only wanted to play her own music. By 17, she'd made the decision to quit high school and move to California to live with her father and pursue music full time. She was signed to Epic within a year, and her 1996 debut album, Tidal, went triple platinum. It was a lot of attention, fast.

At the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards, Apple accepted her trophy for "Best New Artist" with a jarring speech that included the declaration, "This world is bullshit." The words themselves weren't so bad; most would agree that what MTV upholds is glittery and vacuous. But it came off sounding ungrateful and bratty. "I have a problem appreciating how lucky I am," Apple admits. "I never had to run around town trying to get people to listen to my tapes. It happened easily, and I think sometimes I take it for granted." Amid all that was going on—the video for Tidal's"Criminal," in which she rolled around nearly naked; her revelation in interviews that she'd been raped by a stranger when she was 12; rumors that she was anorexic (her father says doctors proclaimed her healthy); and a body of work in which she sounded scorned and vengeful—the perception emerged that she was in need of help. Still, she maintains, "I always turn out okay. I'm a lot better off than people give me credit for."

Her resilience is the subject of the new album's title track. Apple sings: "If there was a better way to go then it would find me / I can't help it, the road just rolls out behind me / Be kind to me, or treat me mean / I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine." The image of a road rolling out behind her is both ingenious and cartoonish, as is the show-tune-like arrangement, featuring gently oompah-ing tuba and a handful of dings and chimes.

In the record's genteel closer, "Waltz (Better Than Fine)," Apple defends her creative process. "No, I don't believe in the wasting of time / But I don't believe that I'm wasting mine," she croons. She wrote the song six years ago because, she says, "I was getting so much crap when I wasn't writing, and all I was doing was sitting outside—but that's what I -needed. I stand by the importance of taking time and not doing anything. I don't think I'm being lazy."

The disc's bookends share more than just a theme. They're the only tracks to make it onto the release from the album's worth of material Apple recorded with Jon Brion, the Los Angeles–based musician who produced her second effort, 1999's When the Pawn... (its full title has 90 words), and who had persuaded her to head back into the studio three years ago, although she didn't feel ready. "He made a good case for it," she says. "He told me, 'The label isn't calling you up to ask for the album. We can do this on our own terms. We won't have them breathing down our necks.' "

With pieces of songs, Apple and Brion went to work. She recorded vocals and piano, but when it came time to listen to what Brion had added, "it was like my brain didn't work," she recalls. "I didn't know what I wanted, and I couldn't get out of the forest of all those sounds."

With Brion's blessing, Apple decided to try a new producer; she selected the more groove-oriented Mike Elizondo (Dr. Dre, Eminem), whom she'd met through Brion. But then, she says, she learned she would be given the money to record only one song at a time by the label.

"I remember thinking, Another fucking roadblock," Apple says. "If I finish something and hand it in, and let's assume—based on the fact that I hand it in—that I'm happy with it. What else is there to say? If they have something else to say, that means they're going to get in on songwriting?"

Apple phoned her manager and told him she was going to quit the music business. "I was so pissed about it. I didn't have a plan, but I figured there's nothing worse than compromising on something as important as the way a song comes out," she says. "I can't have those people making those decisions, especially after sensing they weren't really excited to have me on their label. Honestly, I don't want to be around any place where they're not absolutely fucking thrilled to have me there."

Lois Najarian, senior vice president of publicity at Epic, denies that the label ever suggested Apple do the songs one at a time; she attributes the discrepancy to "miscommunication."

Photo: Sheryl Neilds

"They're saying, 'She could have handed us a turd and we would have released it because we love her,' " Apple says of the label's explanation. "All I know is that I was told it had to be one way, which was unacceptable. They're going to say there was miscommunication, because what else are they going to say?"

Resigned to leaving music behind her, Apple—who lives in Venice Beach near her father, her two half brothers and her sister, bicoastal cabaret performer Maude Maggart—was lounging around in her bathrobe one day when she heard about the Free Fiona campaign. Fans, acting on the erroneous belief that Sony BMG (Epic's parent company) had shelved her finished album, planned to protest outside Sony BMG offices in NYC and were organizing to send the label thousands of foam apples and apple-related items. Their efforts—made sweetly ridiculous by their outfits, complete with red matching hats, and their overarching agenda of "liberating" the music—generated a lot of press. "They were making Sony look bad, and also demonstrating that it would be a worthwhile investment to get this thing finished, because people were interested," Apple says. The label says the fan protests didn't play a role in its decision making—but it ultimately gave Apple the money to do the album on her own terms.

While Apple and Elizondo were working, a period the producer describes as "blissful and easy," the unfinished Brion tracks were leaked online. "I think whoever did it must have thought they were doing me a favor, but they were really fucking me up. Who would want to buy the album if the songs were -already out there?" Apple asks.

She needn't have worried. The official version of the album, produced by Elizondo and Brian Kehew, debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard Top 200 charts when it hit stores in October. If anything, the mysterious leak probably increased interest in the record. And now fans are privy to two versions, more or less: the Elizondo one, in which the steely, lean arrangements take a backseat to Apple's piano playing and singing, and the Brion tracks, which are baroque and less radio-friendly. "I think the stuff [Brion] and I did is beautiful, but it wasn't right for the songs. It wasn't how I wanted them to end up," Apple says. "I would think it'd be really cool to have people compare the albums, if only the first version had been finished and was an actual album."

Apple may not realize the extent of the debate, which has made its way into newspapers, magazines and online message boards. "She honestly doesn't care," says her brother Brandon Maggart Jr., who acts as assistant tour manager and who directed the video for "Parting Gift," from Extraordinary Machine. "She wants to write music and perform, but she's not really hungry for approval."

"She's protective of her own perception of things," her father adds.

To this end, the musician, who in 2001 split from film direc-tor Paul Thomas Anderson, vows "never to talk [to the press] about who I'm dating again, because you end up being in a magazine where they're analyzing your posture together." She also avoids finding out what people think of her work. "My dad will e-mail me everything everyone says about me, and I'll be like, 'Daddy, please, I don't want to know about this stuff!' And he'll be like, 'But it's good!,' and I'll be like, 'I don't care!' "

Apple recently gave some advice to her sister, Maude. "I said, 'Don't read the good reviews, because if you read the good reviews and it makes you feel good, then you have to be able to give the same credit to the bad ones and let them make you feel bad.'

"You know," Apple adds, "I don't know if my sister always listens to me. But I listen to me."

Fiona Apple plays Nokia Theatre Times Square on Sunday 11. See Music listings.