Discuss: How Long Is Too Long Between Albums?

Following 2005’s Extraordinary Machine, Fiona Apple waited seven years before releasing her new album, the verbosely titled, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do.

After such a significant absence, Apple is enjoying a renaissance of sorts, with The Idler Wheel earning rave reviews. The Los Angeles Times called it “essential 2012 listening” and the album has a 90 rating on Metacritic.

For all the admiration being extolled upon Apple, Idler Wheel is easily her most insular work yet. The album’s ten songs contain spare piano, an emphasis on light textures rather than overbearing pop structures, and a general impression that the singer/songwriter is back from the wilderness just for a while, content to leave the spotlight at any moment.

Idler Wheel is popular with the masses, too. The deluxe and standard editions of the album ranked on iTunes’ album charts at #4 and #7, respectively, as of Thursday.

Michael Jackson

With all of the attention surrounding Michael Jackson’s untimely death in 2009, it was easy to forget that his last album of original material, 2001’s Invincible, was largely panned. Coming out six years after the release of his modestly received greatest hits/new material compilation HIStory, Invincible got even worse reviews than that collection, with New York Magazine calling it an “assembly-line bore.”

Invincible’s enduring influence has been felt within pop music, however, with the fingerprints of a futuristic electro-pop track like Jackson’s Unbreakable” all over work by The Black Eyed Peas, Katy Perry.

Jackson was a notorious perfectionist and his passing assured that any music released after his death would not undergo his meticulous standards for quality control.

Guns ‘N Roses

In a recent episode of music interview podcast Low Times, host Tom Scharpling and Vampire Weekend singer/guitarist Ezra Koenig discussed the amount of time certain artists will put into writing and recording music, with Scharpling asking Koenig, “Do you kind of see how people can go crazy...making music?”

Koenig cited Guns ‘N Roses leader Axl Rose as an example of someone who “wanted to make something that was really good.”

Koenig went on to say that the fifteen years it took Rose to release GNR’s latest album Chinese Democracy was a “kind of insane amount of time.”