Tori Songs

An ongoing Tori Amos tribute project.

[torisongs]

#1.

« Then we go on to  C A U G H T  A  L I T E  S N E E Z E  and she’s still vampiring, she needs that boy blood. You can say you are beautiful, you are enough                             - but when are you going to claim it? You are on the hunt.

It’s really about a relationship. And she’s kinda given herself away, so she’s trying to get pieces back in any way she can. I mean, whoever works at that point, Inanna or whoever. And if it works calling her in the church, to evoke a little ass, then you go for it.

It was about not looking to men outside of yourself, but finding your male self. I needed to figure out who that was. I think my animus was a dandy. But maybe he played on both sides of the fence. He gave me a real talking-to:     “Why are you trying to steal other people’s fire? You need to light your own and burn with it until you transcend it. What are you looking for in all these men in your life? You won’t find it in them, and you won’t find it in me either.                                                                      You have to find it in you.” »

[torisongs]

#2.

« There’s a lot of symbolism in it, there are moments when I turn around and I say something like:          "she’s convinced she could hold back a glacier           but she couldn’t keep baby alive" 

Really clear. There are moments when it gets really clear and it goes back into symbolism again:           “ballerinas that have fins that you’ll never find“ 

Which makes a lot of sense to me, because it’s obviously a mermaid reference, but it’s more than that. 

Maybe you’ll be a mother and you’ll never have that physical experience                      – like you’ll never have the experience of being a mermaid. But even though you might not be a physical mother, it doesn’t mean you can’t have that kind of maternal love. »

[torisongs]

#3.

« P R E C I O U S  T H I N G S  is a song that came to me when I was living behind a church. 

I was about 24 years old. I had a roommate that listened to really raucous music and it started to take me into flashbacks of my grandmother. And she used to put me in a corner and she would read me something, I think from Leviticus, I can’t remember. But she was convinced that I was gonna give my soul to God and my body to a man that I would marry.                                     But at five years old I knew that we were enemies. 

So, in my mind I was always trying to find ways to get away from this Creature. I thought of things and my mother thought I was a demon for thinking them but I think she would smile out of the corner of her mouth because I think she felt the same way.  

          So, behind this church with this music going on and on in my head, I started to really think that maybe just one day I could run faster… »

[torisongs]

#4.

«  I wish she had been on Pele, cause I think it would have been kinda cool for a volcano to say:                “This is cooling faster than I can”

I usually try not to define my lyrics too much. I think it’s really important that people find it in their own way. 

      But when I wrote  C O O L I N G  I had been in Hawaii, and I was really on a sensory level with pineapples – the smell of them – they had an effect on me while I was there. 

I sound like I’m talking a load of gibberish, but I don’t want to start talking about who it is I’m referring to in that song.         That’s why I thought it was best to keep it in that metaphorical world. »

[torisongs]

#5.

« Some of you know that we like really good wine. So, I wasn’t quite sure if um, the things I was seeing was from that, or if they were really happening. And it was a strange time, I had a bad pregnancy and I lost the baby. And I started having this vision of this little Pueblo boy everywhere I went. And we knew it wasn’t a little boy, so… I really didn’t know who he was. And the wine really wasn’t that good, you know what I mean? So um, I would close my eyes when he would appear and I would follow him and he would say things like:          “Come, rabbit, come on.”  And I would go. And we had this 1959 convertible and he was a Zuni boy, Zuni or Pueblo boy. And he would sit in the back with his arms like that [spread out] and we would drive for hours and hours and hours. And I would sit there and we didn’t know where we were going, but when we would get there, nobody would be alive. 

So um, it was a strange thing, it was like being in, I don’t know, a bad Dustin Hoffman killer virus movie, you know. And I didn’t know what we were supposed to do, so we would leave the town and uh, he would tell me to build a campfire. Um, and I’m an arsonist so I, I really like that bit. So I would build this thing and he would start dancing. And he would say, you know:           “We failed today but we have to go to the next town tomorrow.” And this happened over and over and over again. And we were always too late. And he would sing this thing in my head. And he would go, he would pat me on the head and he’d say,            "It’s okay… i i e e e , i i e e e , i i e e e …“ »

[torisongs]

#6.

« I think that there is a place where she realizes that people come in and out of your life, sometimes for one day, sometimes for longer, and all of them make you what you are. 

                      You can’t separate these people out of you. They form who you are, even the ones that you kind of say, ‘Well, you know, I don’t know if I wanna be formed by them anymore’…                              But you are in some way. You are. That’s why maybe you don’t have to look at them so harshly because they have affected you. 

At the end, though, you know, it’s us as individuals with our love for the land, for something untangible that, when soulmates come and go, you’re never alone. Even when you’re standing just you and your shoes, because she carry them with you. »

[torisongs]

#7.

« Anastasia Romanov… it’s not like I’ve read loads of books on her. I was aware of the family and that’s about it. So I’m in Virginia, and I had crab sickness! But I couldn’t cancel the show. I was at soundcheck, and needless to say, when you are very, very ill, it is easier to communicate with your source… you are fragile and vulnerable. Well, her presence came. Now I have only heard of her in history, I’ve got no point to make. She comes and goes:        "You’ve got to write my tune.“ I go:        "Ohhh, now’s not really a good time.“  She says:        "No, you’ve got to understand something from this, there’s something here that you’ve got to come to terms with."  And that night came:        ”We’ll see how brave you are“  And that was really about the whole record. That came just about before everything. And whenever I sing that chorus it means so many different things to me. It’s part of my self, my spirit self saying to the rest of myself:        ”If you really want a challenge, just deal with yourself“ »

[torisongs]

#8.

« The whole thing about  S I R E N  was I was asked to do this music to this film, Great Expectations. And when I saw the rough cut of the movie it was a bit of a different thing than it ended up to be. But point is, the scene that they asked me to do, um, when I first saw it, I felt like those guys were on a boat fishing. And they had had this grunge music there               - being a manly kind of thing and I’m like, screw that, that’s ridiculous. If you’re gonna do a manly thing on the water, go Polynesian, 800 years ago. Go into the sirens and do it correctly. I mean the Miller time and all the baited worms all this stuff from the great tackle shop          - blow that. 

Go and find the sirens, make your sacrifice, cut off a toe, do what you’re supposed to. Be good guys. 

So I decided that it would make his character a bit more enriching if there was this mythological element of the sea creatures. »

[torisongs]

#9

« B EA U T Y  Q U E E N  and  H O R S E S  came in one take. It was all done as you hear it, live with the pedal of the Leslie. Recording this was really challenging for the engineers because the Leslie cabinet was out in the graveyard of the church. 

        When you hear B EA U T Y  Q U E E N you are hearing this girl in that moment: she’s standing in that bathroom, watching those girls put on that lipstick. I don’t want us to be talking to her 15 minutes later about what she realized in that bathroom. I want her to go back to that moment in the bathroom: It’s white. It’s that funny fluorescent light. It’s that tile, with the green crud in between. It’s those old toilets with the beautiful handles. You can hear the sound of the water dripping. 

                          Time doesn’t exist in that moment.

       This is not a confident girl. You are not at acceptance level. 

You are in her brain, getting triggered. The little windshield wipers are going, and you’re starting to see it from the other side.

It’s as if the H O R S E S [from “Winter”] have come to take us back, to descend, to find the dark side. By dark I mean what’s hidden, not necessarily satanic. »

[torisongs]

#10.

« S I L E N T  A L L  T H E S E  Y E A R S was foundational. I started writing it for Al Stewart (the melody, not the lyrics) because he'd asked me to write something. I allowed myself to find my voice for somebody else, but not for myself.

Then Eric Rosse made me ask myself the question: How could I give a song like that away? So, as I started to claim it as my own, I was able to write the words around it.                                                       This song became my mantra.  It was a talisman which brings me back to the tale, and to the mermaid mythology.

I wrote this song because you can have a big mouth and not be saying anything. It's about realizing, painfully, you've kept that voice inside yourself locked away from even yourself, and you step back and see that your jailer has changed faces.                                         You realize you've become your own jailer. »

[torisongs]

#11.

« F A T H E R  L U C I F E R  is really about going to have a cup of tea with Lucifer, which I had to do. 

Now, when I say Lucifer, I'm talking about the feelings that we hide from ourselves, not something that's twisted and evil, like during the Inquisition when they used Christianity to torture people.                                                                         That's Satanism. 

I had to go in this record when I was trying to find parts of myself that I had not let scream and dance and have a tear. I went to go visit Lucifer to get my talisman, which means my little magic key that took me to the places that I hadn't let myself go. That's really about having a little tango, a little dance, with Lucifer. 

The idea that Dark is not a scary thing if you go in there understanding there is a purity in Darkness. There's also a lot of distortion in Darkness. It's a choice where you want to go, and I wanted to get to the truth, not to the drama and to keeping me from the truth. »

[torisongs]

#12.

Surrender then start your engines     you'll know quite soon what my mistake was for those on horse back or dog sled you turn at the bend in the road I hear she still grants forgiveness        although I willingly forgot her the offering is molasses and you say            I guess I'm an underwater thing       so I guess you can't take it personally I'm liquid running there's a sea secret in me           it's plain to see it is rising    but I must be flowing liquid diamonds

[torisongs]

#13.

I was leeching off the men in my life. Don’t get me wrong, they were leeching off me, but I didn’t like who I was.

My dad and I were walking out in the old farm, my grandmother’s farm. She really wasn’t a nice person. My dad is like James Dean or Billy Graham. There’s no real difference there. I was telling him how bad I felt because of the first album being so bad and Dad said to me,

“Tori Ellen, when are you going to accept you are good enough for you?”

[torisongs]

#14.

« In  P R E T T Y  G O O D  Y E A R  I refuse to give pity. That was the main thing. Of course this was the worst year of Greg's life; it's a tragedy, this song. Yet... it's like the worst thing you can give somebody is support for their pity. 

Now the other thing in this song is it made me look at when a man doesn't respect himself: how does that make me feel? Okay, we're patient. Let's be fair; we're patient for two, maybe three weeks. And then what happens? We're looking at the friend that's walkin' in the room with him. It's ok for us to be, "Oh, I'm laid off and I'm having a hard time and I am misunderstood and not given a chance" but we get embarrassed when it's a man. 

I've studied this with women. If you're an exception, then you get the gold star. »

[torisongs]

#15.

« The songs started coming.

B L O O D R O S E S was the first, and it was that feeling of ripping open your vein and going “this blood has sold millions of records. This blood can do many things.”

And the men are like “Yes, Tori, and this blood isn’t enough for us”. »

[torisongs]

#16.

« When I make the reference to Neil Gaiman and Patti Smith, or when I say “deck the halls”, this is going into the past where I had visions of how I thought things would turn out.

Always coming back to you: the people that haunt you. “It’s you again, it’s you again” or “Is she still pissing in a river, heard she’d moved into a trailer park” meaning didn’t carry the torch as far as she could.

The song is about giving your power to someone else…

passing the torch. »

[torisongs]

#17.

« I was in love with this boy when I was five years old and I knew we could really make it work. I was trying to convince him and he took this hammer and hit me with it really hard and, you’re going to really hate me for this, but I was so stupid, I tried to get my dad, the minister, to invite them over because I wanted to see him and conquer his heart.

I was going to give him bubble-gum and then he’d let me into his treehouse to play with his toy machine-guns.

I just wanted to be with him so bad.

He called me a nerd. »