She Speaks From The Very Core Of Her Being

Fiona Apple has no apologies for her feisty acceptance speech at MTV’s Video Music Awards last September.

After being named best new artist, Apple launched into an impromptu, rambling diatribe that included: “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.”

“I just had something on my mind and I just said it,” Apple, 20, tells Rolling Stone. “When I have something to say, I’ll say it.”

A pre-teen rape victim who still takes antidepressants, Apple says that defined her career: “I want everybody to know how I feel, and I want them to respect it and to think that it’s OK. And that’s why I’m sitting here … I think it was my desperation that drove me to have the will to do it.”

Loose talk

Ani DiFranco, on the male view of female rockers: “Strong women are enticing, so long as they’re really passive girls in combat boots.”

She was all baubles, and bangles, and beads

Susanna Hoffs turns 41 today.

She had to stop dragging those parts around

After kicking cocaine in the 1980s, Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks says she gained weight, became addicted to a powerful tranquilizer and barely remembers her 1989 solo tour. “I missed out on a bunch of my really great years,” Nicks tells People magazine. But she went through detox, lost weight and had her silicone breast implants removed following a related bout with the Epstein virus.

Swish, swish, swish - the sounds of silence

Art Garfunkel was missing for much of the ‘80s, too, following his split with Paul Simon. “I was really at home being an artiste,” he tells Entertainment Weekly, which meant writing poetry, reading the dictionary back to front and perfecting his basketball foul shot - including 102 straight from the free-throw line at one point.

Guess those hot legs got him into hot water

Sporty singer Rod Stewart has been sued for $75,000 by a woman who claims she was injured when he kicked a soccer ball into the audience at a March 1996 concert in a Detroit suburb.

Suppose Garth was afraid of getting burned?

Garth Brooks settled a copyright lawsuit with songwriter Guy Thomas moments before going to trial this week. Thomas claimed Brooks’ hit “Standing Outside the Fire” was lifted from Kenny Loggins’ “Conviction of the Heart,” co-written by Thomas.

In other words, the Dogg has left the house

Snoop Doggy Dogg has finally decided to ditch the notorious Death Row Records label. Said Snoop, a k a Calvin Broadus: “Suge Knight is in jail, the president; Dr. Dre left and Tupac (Shakur) is dead. It’s telling me that I’m either going to be dead or in jail or I’m going to be nothing.”

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