Top Ten Tori Amos Songs

Today seems to be reboot day. Perhaps it is due to how tired I am, or how I’m trying to distract myself by making lists (a favorite of mine) and listening to music instead of dwelling on my feelings and anxieties, and how exhausted I am. Last night, during my oldest daughter and our “fuck, marry, kill” album version game we were playing, we got to talking about Tori. Tori and her music has been a huge part of my life since 1992, the year that my oldest daughter was born. Thus, Tori’s music has always been around her, ever since she was a baby. So, it was interesting to hear her explain how she discovered Tori on her own, and what songs, and albums, have become her favorites. They differ from mine in some regards, and overlap and connect in other ways.

On my way into work, I started to think of my favorite Tori songs. What they are, how long I’ve loved them, and what significance they have in my life. It really is near impossible to narrow a favorites list to ten, but I’ll give it a try. Some of the songs that “charted” today have been in my top ten forever, and others are making a new appearance at the top of the list. That’s how it goes with music. The songs and albums evolve, and the way we connect does, too.

It was January 1992 when my world forever changed. That was the month and year that I became a Mother for the first time, the month and year that my oldest daughter was born, and it was the month and year that the here’s and how’s and why’s of my life became not just about me. It was the month and year that everything in my reality changed, and it was also the month and year that I discovered two artists/bands that would have an enormous impact on my life; one of the two was Nirvana, and the other was Tori Amos.

Little Earthquakes hit the record stores two days before my daughter was born, but it was actually the EP single to Crucify that I got a hold of first. I had caught Tori’s cover version of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit on a local radio broadcast about two weeks after my daughter was born, and I remember going with one of my best friends’s to a local record store to get it, cracking it open in the car, and playing it on repeat together. He and I would later see Tori play live three times together, often considering her as our mutual musical love.

It did not take long for me to grab a copy of Little Earthquakes. I played it over and over, finding myself in so many of the songs, recognizing the stories, the struggles, the pain and the pleasures within them. As an ex-parochial school girl, a survivor of childhood abuse and of a rape from two years prior that I was still trying to come to terms with, a grown-up girl who was questioning religion, and who was full of copious amounts of confusion and silences, I felt like the album was written just for me, especially the songs Precious Things, Me and a Gun and Silent All These Years. I clung to it, sang-a-long to it, memorized it, and found strength in it, enough to leave a bad relationship and take a hold of my life as a single Mother and as a twenty-something woman who was going to live, write, and stay silent no longer.

Tori and I would go on to do many things together, her music a continual part of my life soundtrack. She sang-a-long through me trying to give it a go with my daughter’s Father multiple times, and our eventual divorce. She would hold hands with me while I fell in love again, two of her albums coming with me cross-country as I followed my heart and a man who would end up being my second husband, and the Father of my other two children. She would accompany my sleepless nights through his illness, addiction and suicide. She would later grieve with me through a miscarriage, through mistakes and moves from state to state, through infidelities and insecurities. She would be the music to fill in the good spaces, too, and the mundane, the trips to the grocery, the late night talks with good friends, and days that bled into nights when I could not stop writing (and on days I could not get the words out, too).

It all started with an EP full of covers, and her musical magic in my life is far from over today. There are very few artists that have had quite an impact on my life like Tori Amos has, and I am sure this will not be the last time I write about her, and her music, here at lyriquediscorde. (taken from an earlier Tori post of mine)

Top Ten Tori Amos Songs
Top Ten Tuesday
Lyriquediscorde

1. “Precious Things”
from the album, Little Earthquakes (1992)

“I wanna smash the faces of those beautiful boys,
those Christian boys,
so you can make me cum,
that doesn’t make you Jesus.”

2. “Northern Lad”
from the album, From the Choir Girl Hotel (1998)

“‘You change like sugar cane’,
says my northern lad.
I guess you go too far,
when pianos try to be guitars.”

3. “Hey Jupiter” (the Dakota Version)
from the album, Boys for Pele (Deluxe, 2016)

“Took my leather off the shelf.
Your apocalypse was fab.
For a girl who couldn’t choose between,
the shower or the bath.”

4. “Silent All These Years”
from the album, Little Earthquakes (1992)

“But what if I’m a mermaid,
in these jeans of his with her name still on it,
hey but I don’t care,
cause sometimes,
I said sometimes,
I hear my voice,
and it’s been here,
silent all these years.”

5. “Upside Down”
from the Single and the Special Edition of Little Earthquakes (1992)

“I say the world is sick.
You say tell me what that makes us, darling?
You see you always find my faults,
faster than you find you’re own
You say the world is getting rid of her demons.
I say, baby,
what have you been smoking?“

6. “Caught a Light Sneeze”
from the album, Boys for Pele (1996)

“Caught a lite sneeze.
Dreamed a little dream.
Made my own,
pretty hate machine.”

7. “Sugar”
from the Single and the Special Edition of Little Earthquakes (1992)

“Bobby’s collecting bees,
hand hammers;
he used one on me.”

8. “Playboy Mommy”
from the album, From the Choir Girl Hotel (1998)

“I’ll say it loud here by your grave,
those angels can’t ever take my place.”

9. “Jackie’s Strength”
from the album, From the Choir Girl Hotel (1998)

“Make me laugh,
say you know what you want,
you said we were the real thing,
so I show you some more and I learn,
what black magic can do“

10. “Gold Dust”
from the album, Scarlet’s Walk (2002)

“How did it go so fast?
You’ll say,
as we are looking back,
and then we’ll understand,
we held gold dust
in our
hands.”