Life's bricks
November 01, 2021

Tori Amos presents the music that made her

Tori Amos ran down the songs and albums that formed the contours of her life, at Pitchfork. Plenty of different music - Aphex Twin ("coming from a brain that thinks differently than the rest of us"), Radiohead ("It was this explosion that changed the terrain sonically"), Mary Hopkin ("the most beautiful, whimsical thing"), Adele ("like a meteor had crashed in through the atmosphere"), Tracy Chapman ("It woke me up and took me back to my 5-year-old self, who was creating from a pure place of intention of music being magic, as a place where we could walk into and feel many different things").

A lovely text by Guardian's Annie Zalecki about how Tori Amos changed/formed her as a person: "I had Tori teaching me how to be a woman on my own terms. She was secure yet vulnerable, so connected to her feelings in ways I couldn’t yet articulate, and comfortable in her skin... And Tori spoke frankly about religion and desire, and even discussed the impact of her own rape... To an introvert like me, her willingness to be open about these heavy topics was revolutionary... I marvel at how lucky I was to have had this aspirational role model: a woman fearless enough to speak all of her truths, so her fans could find their own".

"When you’re just overloaded on news, it can be demoralizing. This is where artists and writers have the ability to step in and really give people what they need. Sometimes the point is to make something that gives people joy, so that they have a break from the panic" - Tori Amos argues in favor of artists being a positive force in dark times, in New Yorker interview. "I really think that even in the darkest of times, our ancestors got something from art, some kind of spiritual manna—or, as the British would say, the bloody bollocks to move forward and not get stuck".