In Praise of Tori Amos

Tori Amos, who is somehow 50 now, just released her 14th studio album Unrepentant Geraldines, and although I haven’t loved any of the tracks I’ve heard so far, I will love Tori herself till the day I die: maybe some of you are the same way? If so, we’re in good company at NPR, where 10 writers take on different aspects of a love-it-or-hate-it artist who came as she was (“a kind of piano-humping mystical feminist fairy creature writ large”) and cultivated fan recognition and obsession that persists despite her recently uneven output and a resolute lack of associated cool (“confessing to Tori fandom is a bit like admitting you attend Ren Faires”). This in particular, I loved:

She sailed to shore on a seashell, fully-formed, and offered a vision of identity that demanded acceptance. Her music was strange, her voice was strange, and her message was clear: “There is room for what I’m doing in the world, even if I’m the only one doing it.”

[NPR]