Fiona Apple Album NOT Coming Out in a Few Weeks, But Eventually

If you're anything like me, time stopped permanently in your teens the day you discovered Fiona Apple's When the Pawn in your parents' CD cabinet and gave it a listen. What did life mean before this? you wondered, huddled alone on a hand-me-down tartan couch in your basement, sweatily clutching your anti-shock Discman and wiping tears from your eyes. You immediately bought and motorboated Tidal, collapsed in a heap of revelatory exhaustion, and continued your life in a world devoid of meaning and significance for the good part of six years, until Extraordinary Machine was released (FREED!) from the clutches of Sony in 2005.

Since then, you've become an "adult" for all intents and purposes, but are having a harder and harder time relating to people--or rather, focusing on anything--ever since rumors of Apple's new album began swirling around the Internet. You now wake every morning and start desperately pawing around the covers of your bed for your iPhone, which receives a constant feed of "Fiona Apple" Google Alerts for which you've had to create multiple fake email addresses to sustain. Or maybe you find it hard to secure full-time employment ever since you began aimlessly wandering Midtown Manhattan in front of Sony's offices on Madison Avenue, pleading random strangers and tourists to sign a petition, which is actually just a tattered composition notebook filled with--in lieu any intelligible written statement--the lyrics of "Sullen Girl" repeated over and over again...

Or maybe you just like her music and are curious to hear what she's been up to lately! Maybe that's all!!

Either way, you would be forgiven for almost having a heart attack upon hearing that Apple's new album would be released in THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, when Sony/Epic Records honcho L.A. Reid tweeted: "Lots of good music coming from @Epic_Records in the next few weeks. Stay tuned music fans. Welcome back Fiona!"

But, in this cruel world, nothing is ever as it seems--on Twitter.

According to Time, a spokesperson from Epic confirmed that, yes, Apple will have a new album in 2012, "but timing wise, I don't know exactly when."

So no big deal! That's great!

But just one question: WHEN is "when"????

Photo: Getty Images