Tori Amos'
first seasonal album Midwinter Graces, with its placid
arrangements and guest vocals by her nine-year-old daughter, sounds
light years removed from her first solo release, 1992's
Little Earthquakes. Amos' beautifully edgy debut was
filled with confessional, piano-driven tracks exploring the
complexities of finding one's voice and throwing off the shackles
of religion that helped set the stage for the explosion of women
songwriters in the 1990s.
Little Earthquakes's genre-defining success didn't come
easy. After the spectacular failure of her first major-label
release, a leather-and-metal project called Y Kant Tori
Read, Amos was defeated. "I had to put the pieces back
together, because I hadn't been used to being a failure," she says.
"I had come from child prodigy to 'vapid bimbo,' and I had to look
at my part in the misrepresentation of my soul and how I pulled the
trigger."
Discoveries Amos made about this self-adulteration led to much
of the thematic material on Little Earthquakes, which was
vibrant, self-aware and sometimes searingly difficult. Loooking
back at the album, track by track for Rolling Stone, Amos
recalls, "Coming out of beating myself up about the choices I had
made, I just rolled up my sleeves and grasped at all of the poetry
that had ever meant anything to me," Amos says. "From Rimbaud to
Baudelaire, e.e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, and also the visual
artists. I surrounded myself with the stories and the thinkers that
formed me, not what those that had the power to push the button
wanted me to be formed with."
"Crucify"
I was living in L.A. when I wrote that. Times were changing. I had
just recently come out of the Y Kant Tori Read experience,
which catapulted me — drove me — to begin making this
music. Unknowingly, I just had to write. Because I wasn't used to
failure. I'd been a child prodigy. From child prodigy to "vapid
bimbo," I think, was one of the quotes — it was a galaxy
apart. Signs were happening around me. Across town, somebody called
Tracy Chapman was in the studio recording her first record. There
was another gal that was coming out at that time called Melissa
Etheridge.
Those two other women were being supported to be true to their
art. I kind of got put in a category. There were categories of more
artistic, more commercial, and in my mind, [commercial] wasn't a
dirty word. Because at the time, there were all kinds of artists
that I liked that were doing it. When Y Kant Tori Read was
decimated, the image wasn't a good choice. I learned a lot by not
really picking the photographer myself, not working with a proper
stylist who understood what you were trying to do and can help you
show that. I had to put the pieces back together, because I hadn't
been used to being a failure. So I had to then look at my part in
the misrepresentation of my soul, and how I pulled the trigger.