Tori Amos

Tori Amos (Myra Ellen Amos), the daughter of a Protestant minister from North Carolina, had already run away from home at the age of thirteen and was making a living singing in Washington nightclubs, a restless wanderer who in the following years would continue stubbornly seeking success (in Los Angeles, in a synth-pop band, Y Kant Tori Read, who released Y Kant Tori Read in 1988), managing to realize her dreams only in 1992, at the age of twenty-eight.

Her chameleonic vocalizations, but above all the operatic falsetto of Kate Bush, underscore the adult confessions of Little Earthquakes (EastWest, 1991). From the piano ballads of Silent All These Years (a stone's throw from the psychoanalytic folk of Joni Mitchell, but with an almost childlike tone) and Winter (instead drowned in a somewhat out-of-place profusion of "Hollywood" violins) to Me And A Gun, a ghostly a cappella account of a rape, the collection has as its unifying theme the psychological traumas inflicted on women, often rendered with the aid of religious imagery (Crucify, in which she sings "Every day I crucify myself"). More than an album, it is one of those diaries that girls keep hidden.
The key to the record is the magical counterpoint that Amos establishes between her impassioned melisma and the epic figures of the piano (not coincidentally, more than Kate Bush, the whole thing brings Cat Stevens to mind). Exemplary and quintessential is Crucify, in which the vowels are often allowed to float freely, in a manner that marries Chinese opera with spiritual music, while the piano accompanies the melody in an apparently distracted manner, actually reinforcing its dramatic power. The long Mother, on the other hand, is a direct offshoot of Joni Mitchell's early records. The dark vertigo of Little Earthquakes is the only piece that truly owes something to Kate Bush, with its succession of cryptic signs (martial drums, electric-guitar drone, chorus from a magic ritual).
With the exception of the mad atmosphere of Precious Things, and the spirited Happy Phantom, which seems to have emerged from a music-hall show, the dynamic of these romances is simple: the voice tells something deeply personal, and the piano underscores its emotions. Amos's limitation is that she does not have enough melodic reserves to sustain the span of twelve songs. The string arrangements are not enough to give substance to the weaker melodies. But the record reveals a profound and refined "author," if not yet a fully fledged musician.

Under The Pink (Atlantic, 1994) confirms that Amos, despite her immense talent, has not yet found her true voice: too many songs seem unsure of themselves, too many arrangements seem almost improvised on the spot (more by the producer than by her); too many lyrics merely brood over her past, concentrating on telling rather than singing.
The tense and mad harmony of God, a shuffle conducted in syncopated rhythm with dissonant guitar stabs and Slavic accents in the singing; and above all the solemn and fearless Past The Mission, a measured anthem for ska guitar and gospel organ, with a macabre piano ballet, while consistent with the genres of the moment, constitute only one aspect of her musicality. In the country ballad Cornflake Girl (at once the collection's "lightest" and most experimental track), the profusion of sound effects and the hysterical piano runs overwhelm the vocal acrobatics and create a hellish atmosphere. The impassioned account of Space Dog is equally destabilized by centrifugal sounds (voodoo beat, funky guitar, romantic violins). If the arrangements enliven and accentuate her confessions, they also end up making them impersonal.
Amos is actually a sophisticated composer, whose songs display an almost classical restraint (Pretty Good Year), the sophistication of Kate Bush (Cloud On My Tongue), the sensibility of new age music (Icicle); even when disfigured, violated, ravaged by the hyperrealism of lived experience. And perhaps the real Amos is the one who finds the strength to surrender to the softness of lullabies (Bells For Her, for whisper and piano music-box), and her musical gifts perhaps emerge more clearly from the prodigious storytelling of The Wrong Band, which grafts a complex melody onto a music-hall piano figure.
The grand finale of Yes Anastasia (nine minutes) indulges in a seesaw of moods, marked by orchestral surges, and completely loses the magic of her singing.
The true voice of her records is the piano, which for years had not enjoyed such an important role in folk music. An album of transition, it demonstrates that Amos is a complete composer, and not merely a girl singing about her inner life.

Boys For Pele (Atlantic, 1996) perhaps goes too far on both fronts, intimacy and eclecticism. The stylistic variety seems somewhat forced (so much so that it is above all the simpler piano ballads that stand out, such as the long Horses, which begins with barely whispered whimpers and continues with a music box full of nostalgia, and the concluding Twinkle, two pieces not far removed from new age music), while the personal confessions, spread over no fewer than eighteen songs, eventually become somewhat tedious (in the end, all one understands is that she has it in for her ex-boyfriend).
On the eclecticism front, Amos has discovered the harpsichord (more a Renaissance madrigal than a Baroque fugue, the elegant and sorrowful Blood Roses) and continues to experiment with the "modernist" pop of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush (Caught In A Lite Sneeze).
Her musical genius is unleashed. She even attempts to coin her own form of hard rock with Professional Widow, in which boogie figures on the harpsichord and voodoo percussion drive forward maniacally until the singer intones a gospel for solo piano (and bull's bellow). It sounds like a return to the most rhythmically charged Cat Stevens.
The driving Talula crosses rock and roll in the manner of Bruce Springsteen, a touch of harpsichord, a hoarse rap in the style of Hope Nicholls, a funky guitar hiccup, and a techno beat.
Mr Zebra is a brief music-hall sketch complete with horn section. In The Springtime Of His Voodoo is an equally bizarre foray into rhythm and blues and swing (piano and double bass), with traces of gospel (organ and tambourines), classical music (harpsichord), and ethnic music (bagpipes played like a didjeridu).
In the end, however, the arrangements work better for her when they are sparingly deployed and revolve around her vocal delivery: Father Lucifer, another piano ballad, centers on the dialogue between the protagonist's falsetto and the counterpoint of herself as a child (it sounds like a duet between Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush), lightly colored by sporadic trumpet and guitar interventions. Piano, guitars, and bass paint Doughnut Song, in which at one point Amos sings three voices simultaneously and in which her soul, jazz, and Celtic inspirations merge.
By accentuating the orchestral arrangements (with somewhat kitschy results in otherwise tender and intimate melodies such as Marianne and Putting the Damage On), Amos loses some of her lyricism, even as she gains in dramatic force.
The album is simply too long (four or five songs could have been omitted), and some moments seem merely like a personal whim on the part of a singer eager to demonstrate how good she is.

From The Choirgirl Hotel (Atlantic, 1998) comes out after Amos has publicized her abortion in every interview. But the themes of her albums matter much less than her maturation as a composer. In 1998 Amos discovered the allure of rock'n'roll and the comfort of "electronica." Armed with a highly respectable rhythm section and a fervor that makes her seem more Bruce Springsteen than Kate Bush, Amos launches into nervous, rather than purely musical, tours de force. Despite this, the record overflows with moments of intense pathos, intensely melodious melodies, those sudden progressions that open the heart, those tender and subdued lullabies that rise into epic songs of pain. Her vocal flourishes are increasingly secondary to the masterful orchestrations of these chamber romances.
Once again, however, it is the relatively spare, piano-led style of Spark that triumphs, a dark story that only Amos can render in a manner at once so solemn and desolate (and take one's breath away with a Cat Stevens-like piano surge); of Black-Dove, in which she fuses the fairy-tale folk of Mike Oldfield with the dreamlike folk of Kate Bush (as well as the former's rhythmic jolts and the latter's wild high notes); of Jackie's Strength, in which the singing lyrically surrenders to the flow of emotions only to be overwhelmed by a violent gust of violins. Fundamentally, it is still her old form of ballad for voice and piano, but the psychological tension (as well as the melodiousness) is heightened by classical-style arrangements.
The other Amos, the sophisticated studio composer, flaunts herself in the driving nightmare of Raspberry Swirl and the long trip-hop of Liquid Diamonds. Perhaps a little too elaborate, Iieee and Hotel dissipate the emotion in a myriad of sonic details. The record closes with two subdued, nocturnal compositions, bitterly restrained, such as Playboy Mommy and Pandora's Aquarium, in which Amos returns to her piano style but without the orchestral emphasis. It is no less effective, however: the more anguished the melodrama, the more miraculous the balance Amos manages to construct between words, singing, and accompaniment.
Perhaps also because it is more compact and selective, this is the most well-balanced album of her career.

To Venus And Back (Atlantic, 1999) is a double album which contains a new studio album and a live album. Amos' voice and piano are becoming mere ornaments, as electronics and session men (often sounding like the Led Zeppelin fronted by Kate Bush) take over the arrangement's leading roles. Amos is disappearing in an abstraction of Tori Amos' music and lyrics. We witness the apparent paradox of Tori Amos' very personal songs Bliss (yet another autobiographical melodrama) and Juarez (which attemps to revive the ghastly atmosphere of Me And A Gun) becoming so coldly impersonal and even detached. The fact is that the music's artificial soundscapes do not match the thorny subjects but rather refer to a joyful disco night. It is not surprising that one feels Tori Amos and her music being decoupled, the former becoming a mere title for the latter or, equivalently, the latter becoming a mere stereotype for the former. Notable exceptions are Josephine (a Cowboy Junkies-like spare, mournful dirge) and 1,000 Oceans (an old-fashioned piano ballad which is also one of the album's most tender moments).

Compared with the other great female songwriter of the 1990s, Lisa Germano, Tori Amos lacks her visceral sincerity and her genial knack for modest arrangements, although, overall, Amos is more of a "musician" and certainly more of a star.

Amos failed to revitalize her art with Scarlet's Walk (Epic, 2002), despite the obvious effort she put into this personal and historical recollection. Few of the 17 songs deserved to be released, although those who did can make Bob Dylan jealous, particularly A Sorta Fairytale, the bleak Taxi Ride, the catchy Your Cloud. The album's mythological journey, which is simultaneously an inner journey, was inspired by the terrorist attacks of September 11 (I Can't See New York) and by the American landscape (both human and geographic), but achieve a universal poignancy. Amos' parable of the American loss of innocence, of the new Babylonia, doomed to repeat the sins of the ancestral one, is too fragile and insecure to be credible.

The Beekeeper (Epic, 2005) is a concept album inspired by six gardens. It is cohesive but too plain, lacking the spark that makes the difference between competent and memorable. It sounds accessible not because she "sold out" but because the songs lack any depth. They sound like half-baked demos that she quickly packaged into finished songs, without taking the time to develop them the way she normally does. Thus the sense of "average", and, ultimately, irrelevance. She seems to have lost her ability to write great songs. All that is left is her ability to write songs that sound like Amos songs. Parasol is reminiscent of Crucify, The Power Of Orange Knickers is reminiscent of the atmosphere on Under The Pink. Most of the rest is fluff.

The same problems that plagued The Beekeeper return to plague American Doll Posse (Sony, 2007), another batch of mediocre songs with quite a bit of filler. Amos even ventures into politics, a really bad idea. There is little left of the magical melodies of her first albums.

Abnormally Attracted to Sin (Universal, 2009) continued Tori Amos' mediocre cruise through the calm sea of nostalgy. Other than a couple of trite recapitulations of her career (Tough Guy, Maybe California), the collection is mostly a parade of senile background muzak. One is almost relieved when she shuts up at the end of endless closer Lady in Blue. One wonders how desperate an artist must be financially, to put out embarrassing albums like this that mostly ruin the memory of much better albums.

Midwinter Graces (Universal, 2009) contained only five originals.

The concept album Night of Hunters (Deutsche Grammophon, 2011) was born from an unusual meeting of pop and classical music: Amos picked compositions by classical composers and created songs that are variations on those compositions (with chamber arrangements by John Philip Shenale); the lyrics, in turn, make up a mythological narrative. The experiment probably only works in Cactus Practice, demonstrating one more time how little pop stars have in common with chamber music.

Gold Dust (2012) offers re-workings of older songs in a setting of orchestral classical music, including the Christmas song Star of Wonder (aka We Three Kings of Orient Are). Pretentious and often ridiculous.

Perhaps the classical experience benefited Unrepentant Geraldines (2014), her most poignant album in years. The rhythm-less piano-led songs include the slow Wild Way, the midtempo Weatherman, the folk-ish Unrepentant Geraldines, and especially the dramatic Oysters. Rhythm doesn't hurt the lovely Renaissance madrigal America, and (discreet) electronics doesn't ruin the graceful neosoul ballad 16 Shades Of Blue. The breezy country shuffle Trouble's Lament is a pleasant surprise in the Nashville style, but the drum loops that show up in too many places are the exact opposite of a classical orchestra and drag down half of the album.

Native Invader (2017), her most coherent and melodic album in perhaps twenty years, is a collection of midtempo ruminations, starting with the gloomy seven-minute Kate Bush-ian fantasia Reindeer King and peaking with the stately hymn-like Climb, that boasts one of her most memorable refrains. A more regular backing of electric guitar and drums ruins Wildwood, whereas ticking drums and a jangling guitar propel the elegant Bats. Arabic strings and percussion meld surprisingly well with a drum-machine in the speedy Up The Creek, reminiscent of Stan Ridgway. The tender and elaborate Bang is another melodic highlight. The solo piano Mary Jane blends classical music, cabaret and blues in a Randy Newman-esque manner. By fusing all the experiences of her career, from the singer-songwriter and pianist of the classical rock tradition to the orchestral arranger arranger and the folk bard, Amos has reached a new maturity, and it doesn't hurt that she also seems gifted with a stronger melodic talent.

Tori Amos reached a nadir with Ocean To Ocean (Decca, 2021), which counts a handful of generic self-imitations (Addition Of Light Divided, Flowers Burn To Gold, Swim To New York State, etc) but mostly tries to embrace contemporary fashion: the syncopated exotic (almost Shakira-esque) Metal Water Wood, the beat-heavy and guitar-heavy neosoul ballad 29 Years and the densely arranged pop ditty Devil's Bane are embarrassing attempts at sounding young and "cool".

The Music of Tori and the Muses (Faerie Workshop, 2025) is the companion disc to a children's book that she wrote. Ironically, sometimes she does better here than on her previous album (the gentle catchy lullaby Knocking, the quietly stately fantasia Building A Mountain, a couple of upbeat singalongs like Insect Ballet and S'Magic Day).

The double-disc In Times of Dragons (Fontana, 2026) is not a rock opera but a rock fairy tale in which she is married to a lizard demon, becomes a witch and turns herself into a dragon. There are moments of genuine pathos: the piano melodrama Shush (that sounds like Jim Steinman in slow motion), the haunting suspenseful St. Teresa, and the sinister and driving Provincetown. The melancholy and stately Song Of Sorrow blends neoclassical strings and pop melody. The rocking, Elton John-esque Gasoline Girls, the fluid melodic piano lullaby Angelshark and the brooding Strawberry Moon (her best piano lied in ages) mark a vast territory. Then there's also the grandiose hymn-like Stronger Together and the symphonic (synth-heavy) torch ballad 23 Peaks to further disorient.