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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular MusicA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZAMOS, Tori(b Myra Ellen Amos, 22 August 1963, Newton NC) Singer-songwriter, pianist. A preacher's daughter, she grew up in Maryland and won a piano scholarship to the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore at age five; her first loves were Bartok and Prokofiev, but she lost the scholarship at age eleven: 'Classical music is all about stinky cheese and mediocre wine.' She later played Gershwin in gay bars, played rock chick in a metal band (one terrible album Y Kant Tori Read), finally emerged a confessional diva after the manner of Janis Ian and Joni Mitchell, most of all the piano playing and emotional delivery (if not quite as fraught) of Laura Nyro. Her lyrics are complex and sometimes completely abstract, her music full of complicated rhythmic shifts and tonal variation; the landscape is both romantic and disturbing, the vein of fantasy reminiscent of Kate Bush without the tweeness. Her debut album Little Earthquake '92 on Atlantic included 'Crucify' ('Got enough guilt to start my own religion'), eroticism in 'Leather', childhood dreams in 'Precious Things', fear in 'Mother' and the harrowing true story of her rape in 'Me And A Gun'. She might tour solo, just playing the piano (she does 'Me And A Gun' a cappella); the album had conventional rock backing plus the occasional oboe, violin, ukulele etc. It was followed by Crucify only three months later (perhaps a live or remixed mini-album); then Under The Pink '94; Boys For Pele '96 was no. 2 in USA followed by live mini-album Hey Jupiter the same year, For The Choirgirl Hotel '98. A fearless negotiator in the music business, she announced '96 that feminism was dead: 'We had to infiltrate the patriarchy, but if you don't then break down the hierarchy, you become part of it.' Sing Us A Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos by Adrienne Trier-Bieniek (2013) got a good review in the ARSC Journal by Elizabeth Cribbs. The book examines the fact that successful women like Amos require a different treatment than that of researchers in popular music who nearly always celebrate the male perspective. |