Tori Amos

Pre-Release

Essential Albums

  • Under the Pink (Remastered)
    Under the Pink (Remastered)
    Under the Pink (Remastered)

    1994

  • Little Earthquakes (Remastered)
    Little Earthquakes (Remastered)
    Little Earthquakes (Remastered)

    By now, the story of Tori Amos’ 1992 solo debut is familiar: Child prodigy starts band; band gets signed; band makes album that falls prey to the stylistic trappings of its day (1988’s self-titled Y Kant Tori Read); album flops, and child prodigy—now in her late twenties—faces the rare opportunity to be honest with herself and start over. Even in the midst of landmark records by Tracy Chapman and Sinéad O’Connor, Amos stood out, a confessional female singer-songwriter who chose piano instead of guitar, who forsook conversational directness for a musical vocabulary as dense as art rock. The comparisons to Kate Bush made sense: Both seemed like they’d fallen out of the sky, wailing in a language more readily felt than understood. But Amos’ closest comparison was Joni Mitchell, not for her warmth or the rawness of her soul, but for the way she balanced the gut-punch of her subject matter—rape (“Me and a Gun”) the eroticism of power (“Silent All These Years”)—with music that was circuitous and complex, but still catchy, even funny. “You’ve found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts,” she sings on “Silent All These Years”. “What’s so amazing about really deep thoughts?” Her label famously wanted to replace the album’s piano with guitars—a response in part to the predominance of bands like Nirvana. But the grace of Little Earthquakes is that no matter how abstract Amos is in presentation, she never leaves any doubt of where she’s coming from. And for as delicate as the music sounds at first glance, the lingering impression is one of confidence and power. Like Alanis Morissette and Fiona Apple, Amos brought you into her head without sparing you the ugliness and complexity that lived there.

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About Tori Amos

With her bold stage presence and penchant for dynamic stylistic shifts, Tori Amos revolutionised how piano intersected with popular music. After becoming a key figure in the ’90s alt-rock boom with striking, unadorned meditations such as “Pretty Good Year”, she gradually expanded her vision to absorb electronic-leaning dance music (“Raspberry Swirl”), trip-hop (“Bliss”) and heavy guitar-based rock (“Precious Things”). Born Myra Ellen Amos, she started studying piano at the prestigious Peabody Preparatory Institute at age five. As a teenager, she turned her focus away from classical music, performing covers at a gay bar and releasing a single, “Baltimore”, in 1980. After moving to L.A., Amos fronted an ill-fated glossy piano-rock band called Y Kant Tori Read before striking out on her own with 1992’s piercing Little Earthquakes, home of confessional and vulnerable songs such as “Silent All These Years” and “Crucify”. Support from radio and MTV followed throughout the ’90s, particularly for the mysterious “Cornflake Girl” and the religion-questioning “God”, as Amos established herself as a feminist and an advocate for sexual-assault survivors. Her lyrics and aesthetic continued to expand and evolve post-2000 to encompass gender-bending (the 2001 covers album Strange Little Girls) and detail-rich songs that felt like historical short stories (the next year’s Scarlet’s Walk). Amos has continued down her unique road, with 2017’s Native Invader and a 2020 memoir called Resistance reaffirming her inquisitive songwriting style and courage to stand up for what’s right.

HOMETOWN
Newton, NC, United States
BORN
22 August 1963
GENRE
Rock

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