I would like to take the time to say I really despise AOL. Notice to whoever runs this hellhole that is my playground--FIX YOUR DAMNED CONNECTION!!
Well that took a load off. Now where was I?
Oh yes, the odd little Goddess with the flaming red hair more often referred to as Tori Amos.
All right, this is one of the pages where I'll harp mainly about one album, although I will make mention of one of her others.
Now, the earliest memories I have of Tori are from the eighth grade. I'll admit here that my friends and I thought she was a total crackhead because of her video for Crucify
How so very foolish we youngens can be, so locked in our ignorance we cannot appreciate the finer things in life simply because we can't understand them.
I didn't fully discover this jewel of the music industry until high school. Of course it was an album I don't really like that much that was my first introduction to her. Go back to my WBRU days. This was around the time she came out with Caught a Lite Sneeze.
I don't know what sucked me into this woman the most--her unfounded use of a piano; her offbeat lyrics; the range of her voice; or the fact the woman actually said "foots" in the song. Whatever it was, I knew I had to get the album and learn a little bit more about this unusual creature.
You see, the thing with Boys For Pele is that I only actually liked a few songs off the album. There was the one from the radio; then there was also, Blood Roses, Mr. Zebra, and Professional Widow--although I'm still not sure what exactly a "starfucker" is. But hey, slag pit and stag shit sounded cool coming from a woman nursing a pig in the album artwork, so it worked.
Aside from that, there wasn't much on the album that appealed to me. Just after that one year of college, however, I fully discovered Little Earthquakes. Now there was a keeper. The album became one of my all-time favorites. (Just to sate your curiosity--yes, Justin did approve of my selection.)
This album hit all the right nerves in my body. It's another of my favorite depressing albums. Like Portishead, this woman has the capability to cut right into your soul with the power of her lyrics when combined with her sound.
I think China was one of the ones that hit the hardest. "Sometimes I think you want me to touch you, but how can I when you build the great wall around you?"
Yes, suffice it to say, that was the one perfect line to describe my only love. It was so fitting it could bring tears to the corner of my eyes every time I heard it.
Then there was the elegant peotry abounding throughout the rest of the album. Like Bjork and Portishead, Tori is very lyrically endowed. She, too, can focus on the smallest details, but it's all the little things we all, as people, allow ourselves to get absorbed in every day, especially when we're in love. Take this line from Silent All These Years, for example: "I love the way we communicate; your eyes focus on my funny lip shape."
I still don't know why that line gets to me so much, but I do know it is in fact my favorite Tori lyric.
This is one of those albums I can fully savor from start to finish and never get tired of. True, there are parts that sadden me very deeply--especially Me and a Gun, the song about Tori's would-be rapist. But it [the album] was also very upbeat. You see, the woman takes a horrifying element of her life, and she turns the experience into a story to help others who may have been in the same situation. And as deep as the song is, as powerful as it gets, Tori still manages to keep it light with a line like, "So I sang 'holy holy' as he unbuttoned down his pants. You can laugh, it's kind of funny, things you think in times like these, when it's me and a gun, and a man on my back--but I haven't seen Barbados so I must get out of this."
So powerful, and yet she'll keep it light so that it may help another woman in the same boat rather than make her feel worse.
Another exapmle of Tori's survivor tactics is displayed all throughout Crucify, a totally upbeat song all amount judgemental hate. "Every finger in the road is pointed at me--I want to spit in their faces. . . ." Don't we all. But you see, the song is also much more about self-loathing. Listen further and you'll catch a line like, "I've been raising up my hands, drive another nail in--just what God needs: One more victim. Why do we crucify ourselves everyday?"
Anyway, my creativity button has been jammed lately--it happens when I start going into anxiety again--so bear with me. I'll leave this page as is and let you go to a couple other Tori sites to learn more about her.
Do your magic with the mouse and pray it takes you somewhere nice. (Hey, on a site like this, how can you go wrong? `¿~)
Click on sweet children.
On to Beastie Boys
Likes List
Main list
A totally Tori site
another Tori site--maily a biography page with other links
