Cute Dog Optional

In unsurprising news, Fiona Apple’s fourth album, rumored to drop this Spring, has yet to come to fruition. Worse, when asked about new Apple music, Sony offered this enlightening nugget:

“If she’s got a new album, no one here has heard it.”

Really, Sony? It’s as if we’re suddenly in 2003, when the stalled release of Extraordinary Machine prompted an internet meme known aptly as Free Fiona.

Free Fiona at Sony Headquarters in NYC, 2005

Their platform was simple: If Sony execs feared the album wouldn’t sell and were shelving it in the interest of money, a legion of Fiona fans would unify to emphatically prove otherwise. It worked.

With its eventual release in 2005, a sense of victory set in among Fiona lovers, their conquered possession of Extraordinary Machine causing the tunes to ring that much sweeter.

But Apple’s very own drummer and co-producer, Charley Drayton, has already confirmed the album, leaving the real quandary of Who’s Holding Things Up? left unanswered.

Either Sony’s trying to make The Guinness Book of World Records for “Most Clueless Record Corporation On Earth” by again undermining the magnitude of Apple’s cult following, or the temperamental songbird is being all tortured artist on us and can’t decide whether her songs are any good.

They’re good, Fiona. Trust us, they’re good.