Hustlers: Fiona Apple reacts to Jennifer Lopez dancing to ‘Criminal’ in new film
‘I would give my song to Jennifer Lopez to dance to for free,’ Apple said
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Your support makes all the difference.Fiona Apple loved that Hustlers used her song “Criminal” for an extended stripping sequence, commenting: “I would give my song to Jennifer Lopez to dance to for free, any day, any time”.
In a rare interview with Vulture, singer/songwriter Apple said that she had yet to see the film itself (“If I were a person who actually left my house, I’d go”), but that she was honoured to have been asked by the film to use the song, even if she claimed she couldn’t remember the circumstances of the request.
“To be honest, I really don’t think I remembered that I had given the song to Hustlers,” she said. “And I was like, ‘Whoa, I forgot about that! That’s so great.’ Basically, every single time any college dancer or So You Think You Can Dance [contestant] asks, I’ll give them the rights. ‘Criminal’ has always been what people ask for the most, so it’s always been my little help-out-people song.
She added: “I didn’t know [Jennifer Lopez] was going to be dancing to it. I’ve seen a lot of pieces about how they got [the rights to] ‘Criminal,’ but it’s just funny to me — there’s a disconnect between agents, because I never got a video of the dance. And I want it, bad! I’m all for the movie, though, and I’m excited to see it.”
In Hustlers, Lopez’s character is introduced via a sultry dance sequence in which she performs a striptease to the song. Despite being released in 1996, “Criminal” had never been licenced to a feature film before Hustlers.
Speaking to Vulture earlier this month, Hustlers director Lorene Scafaria said that Lopez had originally wanted to be introduced stripping to Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game”, but knew that it had to be “Criminal” instead.
“I love the tempo, I love what it says, I’m obsessed with the song and in love with Fiona Apple,” Scafaria said. “The lyrics, the storytelling of it, the mood of it, the power of it, the seduction of it — there’s something layered to it. It’s about a lot more than it sounds like it’s about.”
Apple, who has not released new material since her 2012 album The Idler Wheel, additionally told Vulture that her forthcoming fifth album was meant to have been released “a million years ago”, but that she hoped to have it finished for early 2020.
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