For the love of a Goddess

Tori on Jay Leno....loves it!

U.S. tour dates

Sinful Attraction Tour
Seattle, WA WaMu Theater (July 10)
Portland, OR Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (July 11)
Oakland, CA Paramount Theatre (July 13, 14)
San Diego, CA Humphrey’s (July 16)
Los Angeles, CA Greek Theatre (July 17)
Phoenix, AZ Dodge Theatre (July 18)
Salt Lake City, UT Abravenal Hall (July 20)
Denver, CO Paramount Theatre (July 21)
Kansas City, MO Starlight Theatre (July 23)
Grand Prairie, TX Nokia Theatre (July 24)
Austin, TX The Long Center for the Performing Arts (July 25)
Atlanta, GA Chastain Park Amphitheatre (July 27)
Orlando, FL Bob Carr Performing Arts Center (July 28)
Miami, FL The Fillmore Miami Beach The Jackie Gleason Theater (July 29)
Durham, NC Durham Performing Arts Center (July 31)
Washington DC DAR Constitution Hall (August 1)
Chicago, IL Chicago Theatre (August 3)
Milwaukee, WI Riverside Theatre (August 4)
Minneapolis, MN State Theatre (August 5)
Indianapolis, IN Murat Theatre (August 7)
Detroit, MI Detroit Opera House (August 8)
Toronto, ON Massey Hall (August 10)
Montreal, QC St. Denis Theatre (August 11)
New York, NY Radio City Music Hall (August 13)
Philadelphia, PA Tower Theatre (August 15)
Boston, MA Bank of America Pavilion (August 17)

UK dates

Sept 6
Manchester Apollo
Manchester, UK

Sept 7
Birmingham Symphony Hall
Birmingham, UK

Sept 8
Royal Concert Hall
Glasgow, UK

Sept 10
Hammersmith Apollo
London, UK

Sorry about the lack of updates my son, Zen graduated. I've been a busy girl!

Tori Amos
Abnormally Attracted to Sin
by Jonathan Keefe


What Tori Amos has struggled to do over the past decade is strike a balance between her mile-wide self-indulgent streak and her equally boundless creative ambition, and that problem has diminished her reputation as one of her generation's headiest artists. Since 1999's To Venus and Back, it has become difficult for anyone outside of her ever-diminishing cult following to endure her cloying wordplays, not to mention her obtuse, structurally unstable album concepts that require more ontological research than a philosophy student's graduate dissertation. Still, even at her most fey and insufferable (her flat-out creepy recitation of "97 Bonnie and Clyde" from Strange Little Girls or the entirety of the deadly-dull The Beekeeper), there has been something admirable about Amos's willingness to challenge conventional notions of the types of ideas and expectations a pop artist can incorporate into his or her work.

That said, it's a genuine relief that Abnormally Attracted to Sin lacks the cumbersome structural conceit of Scarlet's Walk or the dissociative identity disorder of American Doll Posse. Rather than suffocating her songs under a pretentious broad construct, here Amos allows them to stand on their own merits and, in turn, demonstrates the superior craft upon which she first made her name. Sin simply offers the finest batch of songs she's written since 1997's extraordinary From the Choirgirl Hotel.

What impresses most about the set is that, even without a formally defined concept, the album emerges as a thoughtful, dense exploration of matters of faith, sanctimony, and vice. From the sultry "Strong Black Vine," on which Amos struggles to reconcile her love-hate relationship with her religious upbringing, to "Maybe California," a frankly stunning plea from one mother to another who is contemplating suicide, the ideas and images in play are complicated and prickly. The subversion of traditional Christian iconography on opener "Give," with its "Some give blood/I give love" refrain, favorably recalls some of the best known material from Little Earthquakes, while "Flavor" cribs its critical choice between fear and love from Donnie Darko's would-be evangelist.

Even when Amos is writing songs as strong as "Not Dying Today" and "Fast Horse," which boast two of the album's standout melodic hooks, Amos's self-indulgence does get the better of her. At 17 songs and well over 70 minutes, Sin reaffirms that the artist still desperately needs to develop an internal editor. Cutting a handful of songs would make for a less trying and more effective listen: "Ophelia" smacks of pandering to the angst-ridden teen girl demo that has long been one of Amos's main constituencies, while the "break up/make up" couplets from "That Guy" are obnoxious. But even with its bloated running time, Sin is more thematically satisfying and sonically adventurous than anything Amos has recorded in years.

This is too funny!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/may/07/tori-amos-welcome-england

SO NOTORIOUS

She’s back, children. And this time not only is she armed with an album – Abnormally Attracted to Sin – but a West End musical – The Light Princess.

COLIN CRAUMMY takes a trip into the magical land of TORI AMOS and hears her muse on politics, sex and the chances of 30 chorus boys belting out Cornflake Girl.

Tori Amos is singling lines from West Side Story and Cabaret down the line to Attitude from her home in sunny Florida. If you are a Tori fan, and gay and like a musical (statistically this is quite a likely combination) then this is pretty much manna from mamma Tori heaven.

There has been plenty of manna to chew on. For near on twenty years, the Amos has held court in the hearts, minds and record collections of her extremely devoted fanbase with her famously challenging, unapologetically female, always passionate and somewhat loopy take on life, love and politics. She’s sung frankly about her rape, miscarriages, sexuality, her religious upbringing as the child of a Methodist Minister, and most recently her despair at the policies of George W. Bush, on 2007s album American Doll Posse.

Originally, a new Tori Amos record wasn’t due to surface until 2010. There was the American Doll Posse tour to complete, work on a comic book based on Tori songs and the small matter of a wholly original musical based on the 19th century book The Light Princess to be produced by the British National Theatre.

Then in May last year, the Amos announced she had ended her relationship with Epic Records and would be operating independently of major record labels on future work – the fruits of which has already come to bear on her latest and tenth album Abnormally Attracted to Sin, out this month. AATS – taken from a line in Guys and Dolls – sees Tori delve deep into themes that have echoed through her canon of work: the politics of womanhood and the nature of sin. There’s tales of suicidal homemakers, empowered women, feisty (what else?) attacks on religious intolerance and state oppression. At 18 tracks it’s another opus, inspired by visual vignettes filmed during the American Doll Posse tour by Christian Lamb, but one with which the lady wields her piano as the weapon she always said she wanted to.

When did you start working on this new record?
The first stage of song writing began on tour in 2007; there was a second stage in July (2008). When you’re traveling and you’re not a part of things then you observe them in a different way. You’re a living ghost. But you walk through, in and out of people’s lives. And they tell you things when you are in my position. People will come up to you. And then you’ll get the most involved stories that you might not even hear from a close friend in normal life.

What were people telling you?
I saw the changes that were happening so rapidly and people’s lives being turned upside down. People were losing jobs. I have never seen things so desperate.

So you were writing as the effects of the recession started to hit home in the US?
Yes. The strange thing about the economic albatross is the effects that it’s having [on] the definitions we used to have of what is a powerful person. We would equate somebody that had a job and was able to pay their mortgage as successful. And now we are having to really redefine what is success and what is power.

And this is reflected on the album?
Like Maybe California, where a mother is contemplating suicide and you don’t know why. You don’t know. Is it because her husband lost his job and everything is falling apart? I was discovering this on my travels, some of the women weren’t losing their jobs but the men were. And the effect that was having in the home; relationships were just completely unraveling.
American Doll Posse took on the Bush Administration. Abnormally Addicted to Sin continues threads about repression and power. So your anger didn’t die with the Bush era? There’s a song called Police Me. And it talks about the idea of remote viewing. The idea that even though we’re in free land, they can know everything about you and everything about me, and they can assess. I don’t think that’s died with the Bush administration because I don’t think it’s just about a President, I think it’s much, much deeper than that.

But presumably you are hopeful about the new Presidency in the US?
Oh, absolutely! But what I am saying is that you don’t walk in and dismantle a structure. I am talking about forces behind a man or a woman. These structures, that have been in place for years and years, they don’t change the new President. That’s what’s breaking the back of the people. It’s not necessarily who’s in or out. There’s an undercurrent, and that is what some of the record was investigating. But yes, steps must be taken and having Obama in was a big step.

Were you disappointed to see Proposition 8 go through on the day of the Presidential election?
Extremely disappointed. Well, we go back to this concept of emancipation. The idea [of] ‘we will overcome’ from the great Dr. Martin Luther King, was made in flesh as Obama was put into the office and yet at the same time another group of people were subjugated by some of those voters. This is the idea that a lot of us can’t see that we do to somebody what has been done to us. When we get in a position of power, we exercise our power in a way that is not about the path of Christ, the compassionate path. Because a lot of people were saying, “Well you have to understand that a lot of the voters are Democratic voters and Christians [who] are the ones that had an issue with right for the gay community”. And I would say, how, in any way, is that the Christian path? And so that was my problem. That the gay community was treated no different than the black community was treated thirty, forty years before. You have to take away the judgment. I’ve always said get the Democrats out of your bank account and the Republicans out of your bedroom. But now you’ve got to get the Democrats in the bedroom as well. And that was a little disheartening.

Did you have any friends in California affected by the ruling?
Oh yeah. Some of them were really trying not to be completely victimized. And are trying to look at the situation, and say, “Okay what do we have to do in order to organize ourselves”? and I thought okay, that’s more of a survivor’s approach than a victim’s approach to organize and to work behind the scenes. You have to be smart, not right in this situation. This goes back to the song Strong Black Vine and the idea of religious intolerance. Sometimes, unfortunately, it’s across the board. It’s even with some of the atheists who have ideas and if you don’t agree with certain things, they’re going to attack you too. And you kind of think, my god, where’s tolerance?

On parallel lines, your work has consistently dealt with women’s repression and rights. How does this manifest itself on the new album?
I was intrigued about the key work ‘power’, which is at the centre of everything we’re talking about. Because if your definition of power is authority and one who can judge another person than that means you have to make one powerless in order to feel powerful. And we get into the idea of demeaning activity. So I was fascinated with how erotica can sometimes be associated with being demeaned instead of the idea that there’s sacredness to it and spirituality involved. If you really claim your body is your own, and your mind and your heart and your spirit, then when they’re all working together, you’re going to have a completely different life. And a lot of times people have edited out this side of sensuality.
It’s the idea of sex as sin and that sinfulness turns us on, then? It’s how you can get someone to turn against themselves or feel good about themselves. You go back to the idea of power and a lot of people are turned on by being overpowered. Because I’ve talked to a lot of people, men and women, and they get turned on by the idea of having power over someone or being overpowered. That is an aphrodisiac. So in some songs we’re exploring that. Why aren’t we turned on by people who respect us, right?

So power as an aphrodisiac is not a good thing?
No, no, no, no, no, no! It’s what we’re exploring. No, that’s what we’re exploring because that’s how you find out. You’ve got to know, go back to abnormally attracted to sin. This is about what we are attracted to. What are you attracted to because that tells you. You know when people say “I am trying to find myself”. Look, all you need to do is look at what you’re attracted to and know what you’re made up of in that moment. And sometimes you sit there and go “But I don’t want to be attracted to this”. Well, but you are. You have to be honest about it.

Your music has developed this motherly aspect, some fans refer to you as a healer. Do you think that’s why people are attracted to you as an artist?
Oh, I hope so. If you would have said that to me ten years ago, I would not have been able to, to embrace that. Ten years ago, I would have said, “You don’t think I’m hot?” Being a physical mother was a great healing process for me [Tori has an 8-year-old girl, Tash]. I became a beached whale and felt sexy at eight months pregnant just because of what my body could do. That’s what I needed with all my Christian guilt, and all that stuff about the body and if you have these desires, they’re carnal, and all that programming that you think you’ve gotten out with all that hair spray and shopping at Retail Slut in L.A. and hanging out with Matt Sorum from Guns N’ Roses…that’s not what kicked it out. What kicked it out was this little child that as she grew and grew and grew; kicked out those kind of self-imposed opinions that I had not realized had slipped through myself.

The journalist Chuck Klosterman, who observed sets of music fans, came up with the top ten musicians with the ‘most dedicated, least rational’ fans. Slayer was number one, and you were number two.
I’m in good company with Slayer. Who was number three?

Sublime. I don’t know who they are. The top ten includes Kiss, Black Sabbath, Bruce Springsteen, Morrissey and Iron Maiden. There aren’t a lot of chicks. There’s something in the fact that it’s you and these heavy metal bands. Like them, you’re beyond trends, you speak your own language and you use your piano as a weapon in the way they would wield their guitars.
That’s true. When I was studying Guitar Player as a teenage girl, I was thinking: ‘These guys are onto something’. They’ve been able to use the instruments in a way. I mean ‘cock rock’ became a pejorative. But if you really think about it, they’re not assaulting another human being, they’re taking their instruments and plugging into this 220 voltage. And it seemed to me that a piano could do that but you had to play with your whole body. You couldn’t just play with your hands and you had to let it play you. ‘Metal Momma’ comes to mind.

You covered music like Slayer’s Raining Blood and said you wanted to play like you had the devil in you, just like a heavy metal band might.
If you’re going to do that, you have to be willing for the negative aspects as well. Which means if you’re going to stir it up, you have to figure that you might get on some blacklist somewhere.

How is the new musical going?
The latest is that it’s in the next draft. Green light is still on, which is always kind of nice. [Originally] we wrote a musical that would probably last four days. So everybody got a song.

A four day Tori musical would go down well in some circles.
Well. Ha, ha. It could be a pilgrimage. But the thing is you give everybody a song. You think ‘Let’s give the soldiers a song, let’s give this guy a song’ and then finally the people involved kind of looked at Sam Adamson and me and said, “okay, now well you guys go back and make this two hours”.
So can we expect a West End extravaganza with 30 chorus boys belting out Cornflake Girl? Oh god, I would love 30 chorus boys belting out something like Cornflake Girl. That would just make my year. But I don’t know if they’ll give that to me because, you know, every chorus boy has a price.

Is it going to be staged in London?
Well, yeah the idea is that it’ll go over to Broadway. The British National Theatre develops things that then go onto Broadway. And I think maybe because I’m an American, they thought maybe Broadway will at least kind of know who she is? And not just say: “Oh God what is she trying to do?”
The album’s title is taken from a line in Guys and Dolls. What musicals best represent Tori Amos? It would have to be excerpts from quite a few. It would have to be Big Spender from Sweet Charity. How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? [sings] “I’m reviewing the situation” [from Oliver] into a “maybe this time I’ll get lucky” from Cabaret. And “I like to be in America, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la”. And the big finale would have to be some Bob Fosse sexy number. God I just love his choreography. I just love it.

Does your daughter listen to your music?
Oh yeah, she listens to everything. But she gets on YouTube and she starts these impersonations. She’s very funny Tash, scary funny though. She’s eight but things she comes up with, it’s a little dark and dangerous and that’s probably because she’s traveled so much and she’s around adults. We were at this shoe store just last week. And Tash comes in wearing these Michael Kors five-inch platforms. Michael Kors at eight! So yes, I have my work cut out for me. “Well,” she says to me “you realize mommy if I was a boy, I’d be gay”. And she says “how many straight guys like to shop like this?”

Are you on Twitter?
I’m not. I don’t know. I’m busy. I’ve got stuff to do.
Status updates in 140 characters. Oh god. “I really need work, I need something to do. Please hire me, give me a project. Because if I am doing this then that means that The Light Princess is not getting written and everything else I’m supposed to do has turned its back on me. And I’m desperate.”

Abnormally Attracted to Sin is out on Universal Republic 19 May.

Miss Tori has since joined Twitter at www.twitter.com/therealtoriamos.

Financial crisis inspires Tori Amos' latest album
Reuters

By Michelle Nichols Michelle Nichols – Fri May 8, 9:02 am ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. singer and songwriter Tori Amos says she was inspired by the financial crisis to question the definition of power and success in relationships on her latest album "Abnormally Attracted To Sin."

Amos is known for her emotionally heavy songs about topics such as sexual abuse and religion and her 10th studio album, to be released on May 19, is no different. It features songs on difficult topics including a suicidal mother and how relationships are affected by pressure from events like the financial crisis.

"The world has changed completely, it seems, in the past two years. The world that we all knew before, could wake up in feeling safe, ... now it seems that everything has been turned upside down," Amos told Reuters in an interview.

"The record is asking all kinds of questions about power -- how do we define it? Because if it's with money then we're all in trouble. And what is success? What are we attracted to? Because it kind of needs to change," she said.

Amos, who has sold more than 12 million albums worldwide, said men and women who had lost their jobs or homes or were in some other way hurting because of the financial crisis would be questioning their value in their relationship.

"I started thinking we can redefine what is a sexy, powerful male," Amos, 45, said. "To me that's the greatest challenge we have right now, because if we don't, a lot of relationships are just going to be ripped apart," she said.

Amos, who has an eight-year-old daughter, said she also felt the need to explore the role that mothers play in hard times and how they cope, or don't cope, as is the case in the song "Maybe California" about a lonely suicidal mother.

"When the mothers start to shatter, then everything just comes undone," she said. "I was noticing on my travels that mothers hide things very well but it doesn't mean that they're not being pushed to the limit at this time too."

Music magazine Billboard describes Amos as "a force to be reckoned with on the new album, which blends rock beats with flashes of the avant-garde," while website Drowned In Sound says "this is almost a wonderful album. But like some other Tori Amos records, it's an album that could easily have been two."

Along with 17 tracks on the record, Amos has also made what she calls a "visualette," inspired by silent films, for each song. A DVD of the "visualettes" will be released with a deluxe version of "Abnormally Attracted To Sin."

"I think fans need a little bit more than the song. If you're going to encourage people not to steal (music) then you need to make them not want to steal. My favorite saying is 'if its too loud, turn it up,'" she said. "You just give them more."

(Editing by Mark Egan and Bob Tourtellotte)

Girls on Film: An Interview with Tori Amos
Posted by Evan Schlansky on May 9th, 2009









Sultry songwriter Tori Amos is back with a brand new album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin. The deluxe edition of the LP, her first for Universal/Republic, includes an accompanying video, or “visualette,” for each song.

What was your inspiration for the theme of this album? The “visualettes” that accompany the songs seem dark and gritty, how did you come up with that idea and did it affect how you conceptualized your songwriting?

Some songs were created independently of a visual, others were written around seeing these montages that Christian Lamb was creating. This all got started because we were doing something else. Life happens while you’re doing something that you didn’t plan. He jumped on board the bus on the West Coast. We were filming the live show and he was doing pick-up camera work all the way down the coast. I would be shown these little vignettes that he would put together along with live recordings, music from one of the shows that night and I said ‘Cut this off, let’s turn the music off. This is wrong.’ And I’d look at them and there was another story. I think he was filming at a certain point in the tour when the world was changing, it was the crest of the crash. It was the crest of things, our world that changed overnight was just beginning this shift. So the songs were written in stages. There was that group. But some of the songs were not “inspired” only by the visuals I saw. Some of them were coming from things that were happening so fast, the changes, and then he would go away and think about ‘Do we have visuals for this?’ I didn’t know I was making a project with sixteen short films.

When you say changes, are you referring to when you left your previous label, Epic?

I mean life. Everybody seems to have had their life turned upside down for one reason or another at that time.

How did it feel debuting songs from the new album at SXSW?

The way I got my head around SXSW was once I realized that there was no way that I could launch this record alone on the keyboard, there’s so much production work, it really is heavy on that side of things, that some of the compositions couldn’t stand alone at the piano. They weren’t designed that way, they weren’t composed that way, but some can. So I thought to myself, ‘Well if treat SXSW as hopefully a strong female solo performance without other musicians, then I’ll design a show. Instead of ‘we’re launching a new record live,’ which would have been impossible to do. So we got rid of that idea.

Do you plan on including the visualettes in live setting, like sort of a crazy psychedelic ‘60s show?

I love crazy ‘60s stuff! But I’m not quite sure about the look of the show yet. However I think we’re recognizing that it’s not a solo female show. It just can’t happen. But we’re deciding right now how it will look like. I don’t know if the visualettes need to live alone. It’s such a personal experience.

Yes, it gives that impression of such intense introspection. To the point that I was wondering whether it was parallel in expressing what these songs were written about?

Well, they go hand-in-hand. Between Christian and myself, this was never ever about making a video. When I saw how he sees things, I thought… well first, everything is pretty much Super 8 (film). He had been filming all the concerts in HD, and there’s still a little bit of that in the visualettes. But for the most part, everything is in Super 8 and I love the nostalgia of that. You know those old French films from the ‘60s or late ‘60s? We would entertain, we would talk about how we were watching this woman’s life unfold, you don’t know if this guy’s following her around. But in reality, that’s what Christian was doing, Christian was following this woman around the world and just happened to be there sometimes during moments when things were changing in her life.

Which is interesting because while it’s obvious Christian was following you around, lyrically, in the songs, especially “Maybe California,” you seem to be speaking towards an audience, a second party, or another presence so to speak.

Well that’s it. It got to be where I could just sing him a song and we didn’t really have to talk in depth about it. We got to a place where we knew that if we didn’t have any footage that we shot already, I mean I would be meeting up with him round the world. It’s a definite collaboration. When there weren’t visuals that existed, when “Maybe California” was written without the visuals along with a whole other slew of songs, things were happening in stages, then he would just e-mail me and say ‘We got film of this.’ Here we are filming now, sixteen little short stories, and it was just going to be a montage or two to go along with a live concert DVD, which we still haven’t edited yet because the world changed, the songs need to comment on that.

And I think the second phase of the project which happened in July (2008), I was in the States for awhile, I ran into Doug Morris, my mentor, who I hadn’t talked to in fourteen years, ever since Under The Pink. He was really the main reason for my success, for the breaking of those records. The fact that he just fell out of my life overnight and then fell back in again, just as suddenly. It was an accident, I was doing a distribution deal with a distributor in the States, I was looking at different ones. I left the Sony/Epic system, I had had enough, I didn’t want to go back to that. At that point, those 360 deals were being offered and I just thought ‘How disrespectful.’ I mean, come on, that’s like offering me up to be a mistress. So I was looking at distributors and I just didn’t know. I thought it was going to be this little independent release, using a distributor through the website but the universe just did not have that idea. I was out eating with a group of friends in California and somebody walked by the table and said “Hi” from Universal and her phone rang and she said she had to take it and twenty minutes later she’s still on the phone pacing back and forth and my friends said, ‘You know who she’s talking to? She’s talking to her boss’ boss. That’s Doug Morris!’ And I just walked up and interrupted the call, I couldn’t believe I did that! And the first thing he says to me, he doesn’t ask me how I am, he just asks, ‘Tori, are you out of Epic?’ I said, ‘I’m out,’ and he said ‘We need to talk.’ So over the next couple of days, he said, ‘You’re a control freak, I love you for it, now go be a control freak.’

Well that was probably the best advice.

Yea, exactly. He said, ‘Go be an artist.’ So I told him about the film and he said, ‘Look, if you go over budget, we can pick it up.’ So I said fine and we had a joint-venture deal, we were partners. I had paid for everything as it was already, the film crews and all that all by myself so I had no idea that this was going to be what it became.

You seem to allude to this idea of change a lot, was meeting Doug Morris, with his past as a mentor, a catalyst for the songwriting?

No, well I can’t say that it didn’t have it’s own spark because it did. But there had been so many people coming in and out of my life and so many upheavals for everybody, for all different sorts of reasons. It’s not just an economic shift, I mean that is happening all over the world, so it is effecting everybody. But I’m also thinking about people leaving my life, they have to go, go find jobs some where else. People are leaving your life. People are coming in and there are plenty of other things of course, but it would be sort if boring to reveal certain details. So songs like “Maybe California” were coming from a place of seeing that, as songwriters it’s glamorous to talk about the struggle of teenagers surviving those challenges, and people in their early twenties. But the idea that our backbone of society, our nurturing mothers, are starting to fall apart. I started to see it and to feel it and go through it as well. Just being exposed to stories where ‘she’ had a job and ‘he’ lost his job and they have a family and it all starts to fall apart because ‘he’s’ not a provider anymore. So his self-worth is out the window because we choose to judge him for that.

Yea and I think a lot of men can relate to that, which also becomes interesting because once that idea of gender identification sort of goes ‘phhftt’, the question becomes….

‘What’s my personal value?’

Exactly. ‘Where’s ‘my’ autonomy? How do I validate…’

‘What does success mean?’

Precisely. How do you define success as a songwriter? Whether it be this far along in your career or when you first began, when do you feel validated by what you’ve created?

Well, when people talk about the songs as friends, as important to them. When people have a relationship with the songs, separate from me, how they feel about me. Then, in that moment, I know that I was able to translate this creature, this song-being, in the right way. Because it’s a real struggle sometimes, it’s a struggle to stay out of the way. Or… or to get seduced. You know there’s this huge seduction of, ‘Is this a song that anybody will ever play? Is this song structure…’ I mean, what is a modern song structure? Sometimes you go back to some of the really old structures of the ‘30s and it becomes new again because that form hasn’t been used in a while. A successful songwriting moment for me is when I’m not trying to write something for a demographic, for a format, and yet people have a truly emotional response to it.

Who is ‘Ophelia’ (from the new song “Ophelia”) in your mind?

Ophelia is a group of young women that are tangible, that actually exist. I do think that there are moments when you think that you’re out of that stage. But you can fall back into that self-destructive place. It’s almost a chain of being drawn to rejection. Have you ever wondered why some women, some people, are drawn to that regressive, invalidating sort of a relationship? There’s a lot of it and maybe Ophelia, along with the idea of breaking this chain, where for people to feel powerful, they have to have power over somebody else. Sometimes that isn’t a lover, sometimes it’s a boss, or you may have a parent like that or some other family member. You just have to find ways, once you’re not under their roof anymore, to decide, ‘Am I drawn to this for some reason, is there a pattern in your life where you’re drawn to people which you had never realized?’ It’s this chain or pattern that you have to break.

Right, like some sort of intrinsic awareness of yourself you never saw before?

And sometimes you don’t even know it? I think in “Ophelia”, she’s not even aware of that because the traits are never exactly the same. Sometimes it’s pretty well disguised at first, because it’s not necessarily overt. It’s more covert, that idea of power. Something really simple, like the withholding of compliments, that her work doesn’t get encouraged, nothing she does gets supported. There’s that little seed of doubt that gets put in the ‘coffee’ everyday. Just a little, a li-little bit so that you don’t even notice. Sometimes I think that we take examples, as songwriters, we always take the most obvious examples instead of the examples that a lot of people experience. It’s never these harrowing stories and tales. It’s the details in life that as an observer, as a songwriter, you watch. You watch people in a coffee shop or at dinner you watch how they relate to each other. Usually it’s the subtlest thing.

And it’s so complicated…

It is complicated! It’s never like ‘Bang!’ ‘Punch!’ It’s complicated.

Which is present all over the album and its lyrics. Why did you choose to title the album Abnormally Attracted To Sin?

There are different ways to look at it. How we judge ourselves based on our patriarchal view through a faith system. It intrigues me how their perceptions of sin and definitions of power are just something that we take on board without ever pulling back for a minute and saying, ‘Hang on a minute, that’s demeaning!’ So why have we defined erotica as something that has to be demeaning? Why can’t erotica be in bed with spirituality? As a minister’s daughter, I was really brought up in the idea that sex is in the regions of the devil. And if it’s going to be in the regions of anything other than negativity, in the realm of the profane, it seems it would have to be only in the realm of procreating. There are all these rules for you to not feel, later, shame about it on some level. It’s almost like you have to choose ‘fun’ and really following what I’m feeling or a spiritual path. That just seems to me to be the most controlled concept that we were given and have been following for a long, long time. Which busts up relationships and marriages and why you have these illicit affairs. Why can’t I have an illicit affair with my husband? I mean I’m having one! But it took me awhile in life to see how divided I was amongst myself and how the institutions of religion keep the masses under control.

You wrote in your description of the album that Jesus was always the example of compassion in life, that passionate example of that kind of personal freedom as opposed to dealing with the mechanics of future generations…

And also the judgement of personal choices. The word ‘Christ’ maybe in Chistianity but I don’t see a lot of the compassionate Christ in Christians when they’re analyzing other people’s life styles. As I was moving through what I believe in, I began to get to a place where I didn’t need to get the approval of anybody’s to get my spiritual outlook. That’s where I think we stumble and you hand your power over to somebody else. My self-worth has to be based on how I feel about myself. So all these definitions of sacred sexuality has really changed for me over the past several years.

So it is a bit autobiographical?

Most of it. Some places more than others.

You have a pretty stellar group of musicians with you on this album. (Matt Chamberlain, drums; Jon Evans, bass; Mac Aladdin, electric guitar; John Phillip Shenale, strings, Wurlitzer, Hammond), all session musicians you’ve worked with before. On a technical level, do you write melodies by being a foil for each other musically? Does the music come first, do the lyrics come first, is it sort of an alchemy of both?

The songs are there before the guys starting working on it. So the songs have developed. Some times it’s a phrase, a lyric that has found it’s way all the way here and I start singing and humming around it. Or some times I get a musical passage and I think to myself, ‘This isn’t just a bit of salt, this is something that I need to base something on. This is the heart and soul to a composition.’ You just have to learn to the read the signs. You’re getting inspiration all the time. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to click but it’s there.

What was the inspiration for a song like “Police Me”?

The whole idea of remote viewing and how people analyze each other through information and email. In the West, we have very little freedom. They can go through anything. They can request and demand any information, as if we’re criminals. Under the guise of righteousness, aspects of the governments in the West, because I travel and play in different places, they can get into all kinds of stuff. All of that control connected with the idea of remote viewing.

Tori Amos’ “Abnormally Attracted To Sin” hits stores May 19.

- Interviewed by Jonathan Curtiss

Hello everyone!

I once again had the pleasure to sit down with Tori. This time we met in Vienna and it was considerably more stressful than two years ago in Graz, cause she had a very tight schedule. Luckily, I had my dear friend Julia, who is a photographer, with me. Please follow the original link to see the photos in all their glory: http://pressetext.com/news/090509001/

Once again, I would like to offer you a raw English version of the interview. Note that English is not my mother tongue and that this is not the way I would like to see it published in a magazine or newspaper. I spent hours to get the German version right and it would be lovely if you check out the link above anyway, since any click on it counts here at work.

Interview with Tori May 2009 in Vienna

Martin: While the major labels take action against illegal downloads, many artists shy away from the controversial discussion and maybe even offer free downloads as a counter measure. Are the artists to lose out on all of this?
Tori: The possible danger is that if the public is naïve enough to think that when you go to a wine tasting you can put the bottle of wine in the bag. If you start doing that the vineyard is going to shut down. There has to be some kind of exchange. If you’re going to take a song, you need go give back - if you value it.

Martin: You could argue, though, that more people will show up at your concerts, if they like the music they downloaded.
Tori: That doesn’t keep the records going. That only keeps the petrol in the buses and the crew paid. To me, this is about respect. What if I came into your house and start putting shit in my bag? Wouldn’t you think that I’m crossing a line there? Where is my respect for your home?

Martin: But do you see a way out of this?
Tori: Consciousness. It’s not about rules. We’re talking about something far more serious here. This is about a generation trying to find a way to show value. If I’m taking from an artist and all I do is taking, then this is an unhealthy relationship and I’m a parasite. I don’t like the idea and I don’t think the public likes the idea either. At the same time it’s also about being respected by the artist. Neither side can take each other for granted. The artist has to make sure too that they are giving enough and acknowledge for the fact that everyone worked hard to be able to buy this ticket or special package. This is something every artist has to develop with the public. I think it’s a very individual thing.

Martin: During your last US tour you put recordings of many of your concerts online for sale shortly after they finished. Did that pay off and are there any similar plans for this tour?
Tori: It went very well. So, we’re planning something again, but it might be Europe this time. It’s a very involving thing, cause you have to work with the venues and promoters.

Martin: The new album turns out to be quite diverse in style.
Tori: Because the compositions were so diverse, it sort of set the blue prints for the building. Early on, Mark and I were hammering out concepts for arrangements. Then Mark and Marcel were hammering out sonic direction, so when all the players came in, they would be working within the blue prints. After having done American Doll Posse, for which I needed to have a more of a band kind feeling in production, something like this was encompassing twenty years of my composition style. Even though it wasn’t going back to “From the choirgirl hotel” it grabs styles from each period of my career.

Martin: Apparently, the role of the piano on the albums has changed quite substantially over the years. Where does she stand nowadays?
Tori: In making records, you have to grow and there is the composer side of the self that will not battle with the instrumentalist, but say ‘look, I have to compose things that are not just designed for the piano anymore’ and that’s the side that has been more blossoming in the record making process.

Martin: Your early albums seem to mirror your personal experiences and emotions in a different way than albums like “American Doll Posse” or “Scarlet’s Walk”, in which you take on different characters. As an artist, do you feel more detached from your private self than when you were younger?
Tori: I’d say that as a composer the process is similar in the sense that the experiences have to be there in order to write. Sometimes I don’t see, how people cannot see that. There is no way I could write the songs unless I knew them first hand. But talking about the details and the ‘whys’ and the ‘whos’ is just not going to keep you in a 20 year career and keep you having a personal life. It gets ravaged. I think I allow a lot and so much of me is out there in the open – completely. But how it is applied to my personal life just isn’t up for discussion.

Martin: Do you compose differently now than you did ten, fifteen years ago? With some of the new songs, it’s quite hard to imagine you composing them at the piano.
Tori: Yes, definitely. Songs like “Police Me” or “Strong Black Vine” might start on an organ. Within the process it gets tracked, so Matt and Jon can get their performances. But sitting back, listening back, we would find out that the keyboard doesn’t sound right or the composition doesn’t really offer enough room for the piano being the central character. But that’s fine. She’s always there and I’m always working things out with her as a conspirator. At the same time, the relationship between her and me is so secure that now I feel I don’t have to force to have the piano on everything.

Martin: In the “Little earthquakes”- and “Under the pink” era you were known to be a harsh editor, trimming down the albums to roughly 12 songs. All of your latest releases clock in over 70 minutes with 17, 18 tracks…
Tori: Yes, but then you got the b-sides, which have always been some of the favourites of the public. You don’t get that anymore. So if you’re working with a 12 song record nowadays then there was so much music being edited out that was worthy. Despite, I’m a very harsh editor more so. Cause you don’t know what doesn’t make the record!!!

Martin: So, you’re saying that nowadays you rather put one or two songs more on the album, even if they don’t fit too tightly in the overall concept?
Tori: That’s right. Absolutely.

Martin: Thank you so much.

© Martin Jan Stepanek, pressetext.austria

I've actually went to heaven...beautiful!

LOVING THIS SO MUCH!

http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/ondemand/41944313

Thanks Kara!

Songs In The Key Of Sin Out Magazine

With a new record, Abnormally Attracted To Sin, soon to be in stores, Tori Amos talks dangerous sexuality, (secretly) dirty song lyrics, and the pitfalls of worshiping Madonna.

By Noah Michelson

The last time we talked to Tori Amos, perhaps the most famous pop banshee to plunk down at a piano bench in the last 20 years (if you count Y Kant Tori Read, her poorly received, though in retrospect undeniably smart, foray into the industry back in 1988), her career had just split wide open — again. No stranger to being batted around by the big boys at first Atlantic and then Epic Records, in the spring of 2008 Amos finally announced she was going indie. Now with Universal Republic Records as her distributor, Amos will release her 11th album, Abnormally Attracted To Sin, along with a DVD featuring music videos — or “visualettes” as she calls them — for each of the tracks, on May 19.

Out chatted with Amos at her hotel suite in New York City a few weeks ago to get the lowdown on spiritual eroticism, her (secretly) dirty lyrics, and why it’s never a good idea to suck up to Madonna.

Out: At its center, Abnormally Attracted To Sin is about sexuality and spirituality and how the two intersect. You’ve often dealt with those issues throughout your career but what was specifically happening in your life — or in the political realm or in popular culture — that you spurred you to create this album?

Tori Amos: People are still in a state of paralysis with the changes that have been happening over the last year and a half. There have been huge upheavals for everyone and how that affects everybody — whether you have a job or not — is that if we define power as being able to generate money or material things, you have got a whole lot of men out there who are powerless. So how is that going to play itself out behind closed doors? There’s a strain that’s going to be put on lovers — gay, straight, bi, whatever it is — because its power that is the aphrodisiac in the bedroom. So it’s how we define power. And what we are attracted to. Because if we’re attracted to somebody who has to have power over us and demean us, then we have to start asking ourselves, “Wait a minute. What is that in me that’s turned on by that?” Then it takes me to the idea of a spiritual eroticism.

Which is?
For so long the idea of dangerous and sexy has been associated with profanity and demeaning behavior and somehow being subjugated because we’re not allowed to have the dangerous, erotic relationship with our partner who respects us. My husband is a big preacher of this: why is it that men who really want to value their partners are not thought of as sexy and hot? We will talk about the fact that some guy who has naked women on his Blackberry seems to be real desirable with everybody — men and women — instead of a guy who says, “I’m not going to take your picture and show everybody. I’m going to take your picture because I want you! And why isn’t it enough that I want you? Why isn’t that hot?” So it’s been really exploring and marrying these different ideas of can you be in control while you have gold handcuffs on? And what is demeaning and what isn’t? The key is power. The definition of power. And there are some songs where the women are feeling powerless, like in [the Abnormally Attracted to Sin track] “Maybe California.”

It makes me think about the queer community as well, because of the way we’ve been programmed to think that what we do in the bedroom, or even outside of it, is fundamentally wrong.
Right.

So it’s interesting to think about how we then become empowered — especially when even in 2009 giving someone a blow job is still seen as a potentially evil thing. It’s ridiculous.
Exactly. It’s how we’ve been programmed to define sin.

Which is what you’re looking at with this album.
It’s really what I’m fascinated by. What the patriarchy has judged as sinful and we say, “OK! All right!” The power that the patriarchy has had on our self-worth is so insidious and to me it’s why there are so many affairs. Because once you walk into marriage —some kind of commitment with somebody — then the illicit, natural side of our nature gets amputated. If you’re trying to be a good parent, then there’s the idea of, “What happened to that side of me that used to be a passionate creature?”

It doesn’t die. Or it shouldn’t.
Yes. And why do you need to have some kind of experience where you destroy your life to realize, “Wait a minute. I really liked that I liked this person.” But why all of a sudden instead of being able to — or wanting to — do this with them I end up doing it with a stranger who doesn’t know me, who doesn’t care about me. If I’m in trouble or if I’m sick they’re out the fucking door. If the champagne is there — they are there —

But what is that?
What is that? Like you said — we are programmed for so long that sexy is out there somewhere [motions to the room] and sacred is in here somewhere [motions to chest] and you’re never going to have sexy and sacred in a relationship together. And I think it does depend on who you’re with, but I think you really have to work hard to break those programs because they’re so entrenched. And [the Abnormally Attracted to Sin track] “Police Me” is very much about being encoded. As you know with the archetypes from the last record I was really trying to find sides to myself that I hadn’t allowed myself. I don’t need to put on Pip’s [one of the five “dolls,” or personas, Amos created for her last album, American Doll Posse] garb to walk into that. That was a huge place to get to.

So that’s something you realized after doing American Doll Posse?
Yeah. All these different sides of [the dolls] — they’re with me now.

And you can access those?
I can access those. And I needed to access those because sometimes we do become how people see us. Instead of, “Wait a minute — this not how I think. This is not how I see it and I know I’m going to be unpopular with my friends…” Some friends have been changing for the last many years.

It’s interesting you say that. When we talked last time you didn’t seem to be in the best place. I don’t want to use the term “beat down” —
Hmmm.

— But you didn’t seem like your usual self.
When was this?

Last May. And I heard that recently when you were playing the SXSW festival some fans yelled, “Welcome back!” and you responded, “Thank you. It’s been a rough couple of years.” What were you referring to? Were you talking about record label woes?

No. That’s just part of being a professional artist. You’re going to have the drama. [Epic Records] wasn’t a good place for me to be. It’s good for some people but it wasn’t supportive for artistry at the time. But now I’m with [Monte Lipman and Doug Morris at Universal Records] and they’re really into creators. There are all kinds of people over there. I’ve known Doug since the mid-80s. He looked at me and he said, “I know what you do. You’re at a home now where I don’t want you to be anybody but Tori and I want you to do what you do.”

That’s a gift.
That’s a huge gift. And I think in your life you don’t always get to be with your mentor. And maybe because we were apart for 14 years — we didn’t even speak. It wasn’t a bad thing. He left Warner Bros. — he will tell you he was kicked out of the system, locked out of his office — and then built this empire. And while he was building his empire I was meeting other people. And thank God I did because I met some amazing people. But a lot of people — as soon as I met them, they would be axed. So I would just get to know somebody and then after seven months they’re gone! So it was just me, Johnny [Witherspoon, her manager] and Chelsea [Laird, also her manager] really, and my crew and my team and the musicians but sometimes you’re just sitting there thinking, “Why am I handing my work over to these people who only see it as product?” It wasn’t music. You know if people are excited about music or if they’re just there to get the stock shares. And I was not in the right place. But some of those people are gone and they have a new group [over at Epic] and they’ve sent us really wonderful well wishes, but at the time they weren’t there. What I would say to you when you talked to me in May was that I was in a terrible place. And during the last two years a lot has happened. But I wouldn’t have written this record if I hadn’t been pushed — for all kinds of reasons. I don’t want to go into all of it but “Maybe California” doesn’t come from nowhere. You’re not able to write that by having a drink with somebody who’s had the experience and you haven’t. You have to be pushed to that place. And I figure if I could be pushed to that place, then other women have been pushed to that place.

We’ve seen it before with a lot of mothers. There isn’t always a lot of support out there for them. And sometimes they just snap.
Maybe we’re getting somewhere that I haven’t gotten to before in interviews. Maybe because we’ve been programmed to be mothers in a certain way. And somehow, it’s all good and well talking about being a mistress in the bedroom and a mother at play group, but in life and in reality your responsibilities change when you’re bringing up another life. Maybe the last record helped me break down certain images I have of myself, but then events can happen to you that you just don’t expect. Things happen to all of us that seem like this is a time that people are being pushed. Where I’m pushed, you could maybe sail right through. And vice versa. But yeah — the last year and a half or two years, just circumstances seemed to happen.

But they got you to where you are now —
Yes —

You have a new album, you’re creating, you seem to be thriving doing what you want to do —
I’m on my front foot, not on my back foot. There was a place when I think I was being defeated by circumstances but I’ve made a lot of changes in my life — Universal Records is only one of them. So many aspects of my life — Mark [Hawley, her husband and sound engineer], Tash [her daughter], and I are [clasps hands together] but there were moments when it was us against the world and questions about — I have strong, strong ties to America. Strong. This is my home. England is not my home. And I really have been pushed to recognize that you can live in places for years and you’re not home. I’m learning that you can live somewhere but you’re really a guest there. And once you come to terms with it — that you’re not accepted there and that you’re there because you love somebody — you realize there are a lot of sacrifices that you made for love. So does that put strain? Of course it does. And especially if there are outside forces — government forces — loading their guns at you.

Government forces?
You have to figure — I travel and play all over the world and governments are broke right now. So don’t you think they’re trying to come after people? And I’ve been caught between two governments. So this has forced me to learn about the power they have. “Police Me,” “Strong Black Vine” [from Abnormally Attracted to Sin] — you think you’re in the West, you think you’re a part of a system of justice, but my God, what I’ve had to do in order to — I mean, I have the strength to fight a government. Luckily mine is on my side.

But that’s the thing — it’s the old cliché: if you can come through these tests you end up all the better for it —
You do, but people kill themselves over stuff like this!

Of course.
When I wrote [Abnormally Attracted to Sin first single] “Welcome To England,” England can be anywhere. It just so happens to be biographical because Mark is British. These forces were loading their guns and I was touring — I almost don’t want to say where I was because then that fucking tax man is going to say, “You wrote it in our country!” Anyway, I got a phone call telling me, “These guys are coming after you” and I thought But I’m an American and I’ve always done the right thing! Nobody cares. Nobody cares! That’s why in the visualette there’s Tori in an American flag jumpsuit because whether you are going to your partner’s home or are around his friends — it can be a country or it can just be going out to dinner and you just know I am not accepted! They don’t want me here! And you try so hard to fit in and you start chopping off pieces of yourself to get along and you wonder where’s the sage and the tobacco and the sacred smoke? Because the ancestors are not here — they’re just not here! You begin to say, “There are people I like and there are things I like but in order for me to claim myself I just realized I’ve got to get on a plane and go back to what is my power spot.”

And that’s America?
I see myself more as a citizen of earth and I’m not an expat — I’m just not. And to be one of those Americans who knows “I’m a guest” [in England] — I’ve probably outstayed my welcome as far as the British government goes. But being forced to make a choice and then waking up one day and realizing you’re forced to make that choice or it’s being made for you and you’re saying, “Hang on a minute!” You can’t just choose. So when you talked to me things were black and that’s before a whole second part of the record got written and developed when I came back to the states for Comic-Con. And I was on my home ground where I wrote Little Earthquakes and there was a metamorphosis that happened. I passed by that little house where I wrote it and I thought, I took on a lot back then — I can take this on. I can fight. But I had lost how to fight. I had to change everything to fight — all kinds of people had to change. The one thing that kept me going was the love that Tash and Mark had for me. I just saw that I was becoming totally devastated and beaten. Look at the system and what the system has done and the way that people are so enslaved. And you look at Obama — and I know he’s one man but can he turn around the subjugation of the masses to the way the system is? You know, the tax system — you have to be a fucking brain surgeon to figure it out. And I just think people are so burdened in our day-to-day existence — how can relationships survive when you’re thinking, Oh my God! The mortgage and the bills and the loans and the credit cards and the — Fuck! And so it’s not just the sexual programming, it’s everything that has to crumble.

I saw a few of the visualettes and when it comes to the fashion, you turned it out!
[Laughs] Karen Binns, my stylist, does great. She’s really talented so it’s good to give her a name check. She pulls in stuff from all over the world.

You’ve been with her from the beginning.
From the beginning. It was about having this opportunity of having so many little movies — have you ever met Karen?

No.
She’s originally from Brooklyn. She lives in Europe now, but she’s originally from Brooklyn and she’s black with white Jean Harlow hair and she’s a wild woman. But I love that she lives and breathes fashion. She knows a lot of the up-and-coming designers as well. We have our relationships with people who’ve been around a long time like Viktor & Rolf, who are always great, but then you get other people who might not be the Top 20 but who are doing great, great work.

And you’re certainly not afraid to just go there. Like that outfit you wore for Comic-Con —
Thank you!

Who was that?
Margiela. Clearly I don’t think some publications understood that but that’s because when you take something out of context then of course it can get confused. But the people who know what they’re doing and know what they’re talking about realized, “Oh my God! That’s Margiela!” with that neck and that —

Exactly. And where better to wear it than Comic-Con, where you have people walking around wearing gills or dressed like storm troopers?
Right! There were some people there who were afraid to get involved. Karen and I were talking about it and she said, “You are your own superhero, sister.” You cannot be worried about how it’ll be interpreted because intelligent people who know fashion will know, and those who don’t will just show everybody that they don’t. It’s one of those things that when you’re working with those really maverick European designers who have been there for years doing exciting stuff, when you walk outside – and it’s nothing against them but if you’re going to walk out of Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein and get outside of that circle and move into the dangerous designers, then you have to realize that some people don’t understand anything other than High Street.

You worked with Christian Lamb, who filmed Madonna’s last tour, on the visualettes.
It took us a year and a half to film this stuff and I’d I get a call from him and he’d say, “I’m going to be filming with Madonna here, can you fly in?” And I’d find myself scheduling my life around Miss Thing — without her even knowing it, of course. And I’m sitting there and the husband is saying, “Where are you going?” And I said, “I don’t know! Where’s Madonna?” And he said, “You’re not serious!” And I said, “I am serious!”

* Did you hang out with her?*
Of course not! No! No! No! Two lionesses, different parts of the Serengeti. And it’s fine — I have great respect for her and her work ethic and what she does — I do. But I remember this little artist who has sold many records herself coming up to me and she said, “I went up to Madonna and I told her how much she meant to me.” She’s sitting there confessing this to me a couple of years ago and I’m thinking Stupid!

Why would she do that? Why? Why!
Why! And I’ve become like Mother Confessor and she’s sitting there with me in the British Airways first class lounge and I’m thinking how the fuck did I end up with this while she’s having a hang-over and she says, “I just have to tell you…so I say to Madonna, ‘You have meant so much to me and to my career…’” And I’m just waiting for it and she says, “Madonna just looks at my shoes and says, ‘Those are so last season.’”

[Laughs]
And I said, “But why did you go to her with no self-worth?” Because she’s going to hate that! “If you really have been influenced by her, so-and-so,” I said, “Then look in the mirror and be the gorgeous women you are! You don’t need the approval.” And come on — Madonna’s going to smell the blood.

She’s ready to lap it up.
And I said, “You set yourself up for that one.” And this singer said, “But I just didn’t know why it was necessary for her to respond like that.” And I told her, “It wasn’t necessary but you set yourself up. Take some responsibility!” Tongue up the ass – it’s just so boring.

Finally, I have to ask you this because it’s been killing me for the past five years. On the song “A Sorta Fairytale” [from the album Scarlet’s Walk] you sing about “pulling back the hood.” Are you talking about the hood I think you’re talking about?
[Huge smile] Oh, I want you to think whatever you want to think.

* That is not an answer!*
I want you to take it there! I want you to take it there!

Because then when you sing about “tasting heaven perfectly”—
And my mom thinks it’s talking about a convertible! And you know what? Let’s just let her think that.

Abnormally Attracted To Sin is in stores on May 19.

Full Billboard Interview....from the undented



Tori Amos: She’s Got the Power

May 05, 2009 03:44 PM
Christa Titus

Tori Amos always puts the ladies first. During the course of her career, she’s created a concept album about female archetypes (“American Doll Posse”), rewritten men’s songs from a female perspective (“Strange Little Girls”) and connected to fans with haunting, brutal personal portraits—;“Me and a Gun” is a spare tale of her own sexual assault. With the release of her first album for Universal Republic, “Abnormally Attracted to Sin,” out May 19, Amos tackles yet another thorny subject: women and power.

“I am kind of fascinated with the idea of erotic spirituality,” she says. “But first, I wanted to investigate what people are attracted to. Some of the songs are about situations where people are struggling with their power, and find themselves attracted to people that have power over them. Dominance has become an aphrodisiac for some women. But there are also songs about women finding their inner strength.”

Amos is fully aware of her own strength as an artist. When she sat down with Universal Music Group chairman Doug Morris to discuss her Universal Republic deal, her longevity and devoted fan base gave her considerable clout. Amos, who has her own publishing and merchandising companies, was firm about not wanting a 360 agreement. “Tell me the upside of a 360 deal unless it’s about $100 million?” she asks rhetorically. “I have to give half of it in tax, and a huge percent to my attorney, and then that’s all I’ve got? And someone else owns songs I haven’t even written yet?”

Amos defines the contract as a joint-venture agreement. Universal Republic president/CEO Monte Lipman adds, “There is just a tremendous amount of respect we have for Tori, and when it comes down to her vision and the way she wants up to operate, she has a lot of say in that.”

The artist herself is a force to be reckoned with on the new album, which blends rock beats with flashes of the avant-garde. Her sense of humor is evident in the lighthearted “Not Dying Today” and the slightly camp “Mary Jane,” but songs like the jaded “Curtain Call” and the electronic chirping of “Starling” reveal a pensive side.

“Sin” is being sold in two versions. The standard album includes the bonus track “Oscar’s Theme,” while the deluxe one (which is available for presale at iTunes for $13.99) contains a 16-page digital booklet and a movie clip, or “visuallette,” as Amos calls them, for each track. Fans who buy the presale copy immediately receive the first single, “Welcome to England,” and a code that grants access to a May 28-May 29 Ticketmaster presale for tickets to Amos’ upcoming summer tour.

The label is also giving away the song “Maybe California,” which deals with a mother feeling like an inadequate parent, as part of a viral Mother’s Day promotion through an album widget, streams and downloads, and a free ringtone. Amos observes that women often quietly shoulder the burden of keeping a family intact, especially in these times when the economy creates emotional and financial strain. “We define powerful men with being providers. We’re back to that idea of power again, how to define what is power,” she says. “When you have a relationship where both are not feeling powerful, because we’ve equated success with having a job and the breadwinner is laid off, the effect that that can have on the family is beyond description.”

Designing the marketing plan presents a number of challenges for the label; Amos’s fan base ranges dramatically in age and technological savvy. The label is planning a number of TV appearances, outdoor sniping, retail visibility and other online initiatives. For example, on March 10 AOL’s Spinner.com premiered the album’s cover art and track listing along with an Amos interview. On March 19, she previewed some new songs with a headlining showcase at South by Southwest last month. “Welcome to England” is being added at Triple A and will approach hot AC April 28.

Universal Republic sees Amos’ diverse fan base as a chance to present “Sin” to various audiences instead of a challenge. “We just actually had that conversation a few weeks ago about, ‘Is this alternative? Should she be categorized under alternative? Should she be categorized under pop?’ “ Universal Republic senior VP of marketing and artist development Kim Garner says. “And some accounts, they’re going to categorize it in the appropriate place they think is best for exposure.”

Whatever the category, Amos loves the album’s look. “I love the way [photographer Karen Collins] shoots women. It’s not vulgar or demeaning, but I find it just sexy. They look empowered to me and I like her style. I felt that if we were gonna walk this line of erotic spirituality, which is quite a line to walk, I realized the two words don’t necessarily usually end up on the same table together in the same sentence. But it was a delicate line to walk.”

http://polarimagazine.com/editorsblog/

the undented

Tori Amos feels fans’ earthquakes

Ian Youngs
Music reporter, BBC News

Like all famous faces, Tori Amos often gets stopped in the street or in shops by fans who want to say hello, shake her hand or grab a photo.

Unlike most fans, though, Amos’ followers do not just engage in nervous small talk, but often feel compelled to tell the soul-baring singer-songwriter about their own lives.

“Sometimes – not every day – you get a story,” she says. “I never see them again. They needed to tell somebody. I’m not going to tell anybody that’s going to hurt them.”

The stories she has heard over the past two years have provided the inspiration for Amos’ new album. There is one in particular, which keeps cropping up, about the personal impact of credit crunch job losses.

The story she has heard from fans, she says, is the following: “There’s nothing I can do to fix this thing that’s driven a wedge between our marriage.

“I can’t give my husband back his job, I can’t give my husband back his belief in himself. I can’t quit my job because it’s the only way we’re making any money.

“We’re living shells in our home. And I just figure that if I just went away, if I just became nothing, if I just drove off that cliff, then they’d have to give him his job back and he’d find somebody else…”

The album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, is the story of women – maybe one woman, maybe lots of different women, maybe Tori herself – struggling to survive emotional typhoons.

Referring to Maybe California, track six of 18, Tori says: “At the core of the record there is a woman, a mother, who is ready to jump off a cliff.

“And I think it’s the apex.”

The women in the songs are mothers, she says, who most people assume are always fine. “Well the ones I was seeing weren’t fine. Many. And I began to really feel that, and understand it myself.

“We’ve all been in that place at different times for different reasons, where you have huge upheavals. And so that is the pivotal place, where you feel as if you’re willing to leave everything you have because you feel so unable to fix something.”

And on the cliff edge, something comes to the central figure, the singer says: “Is it a part of herself? Is it another force? Or does she jump off that cliff? That has to be left to the person listening.

“Because within the whole record, there are different short stories of successes and failures and survival.”

One song is about the Native American tradition of The Smoke, which aims to drive out the thing that is keeping you from moving on in life.

Another is about a woman who left the right man to follow her career, realises she has wronged that man, that it is too late to turn back, and throws herself into her music and a tour.

She talks about the women in the songs in the third person. To what extent are they characters, or are they really about her?

“I have to protect my private life, and I do,” she replies. “And I’ll do anything to protect it. I’ll lie through my teeth if I have to.

“I can’t write about this stuff unless I’ve been exposed to it or experienced it in some way. You don’t write 10 albums by just writing a journal every day. It’s just so narcissistic. It’s disgusting. I’m sorry.”

It is a mixture of experience and observation, she explains. The question, in any case, is sexist because it would never be asked of a male singer-songwriter or a playwright, she insists.

Sexism, inequality and gender roles come to the fore often in Tori’s discussions about the world and her work.

Religion is also a powerful motivator for this minister’s daughter, who is still railing against the influence of her upbringing.

Strong Black Vine, another song, is about religious intolerance, and sees Amos repeatedly sing of an “evil faith”.

“All of them can be evil, right?” she says.

“When you’re brought up a certain way and you’re exposed to the church, some people want to be compassionate and be understanding of other peoples’ paths.

“But then other people believe that if others don’t believe what they believe, why should they exist? But that’s not just Christianity. That’s Islam as well. Judaism. It’s all over the place.”

Abnormally Attracted to Sin, the 10th album of Amos’ career, comes 17 years after her stunningly intimate and vulnerable debut Little Earthquakes.

The earthquakes created by new album are unlikely to be as widely felt as that original release.

But as the self-confessed “mistress of the darkness of feeling”, she is more concerned with navigating and charting the inner worlds of herself and her fans, rather than the charts themselves.

And those fans are likely to want to shake her hand even harder next time they see her in the street.

http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=103270




It's no surprise they always have the latest!

http://www.undented.com/

The Undented has new Tori info check it out!

http://www.undented.com/

Isn't she lovely!

the undented is posting that 500 Miles, Flavor, and Ophelia "visulettes" have also come out, plus lots of other news....check it out http://www.undented.com/

I love ....."maybe, california"


hey Mrs. see, please don't jump
"why not, nothing is making sense anymore to me
I don't know when I stopped making him smile.
Now the kids see me cry all the time."

From one mother to the other
They'll never get over this
for their lifetime all their wishes
will be dashed upon those cliffs.

So let's be, be strong you and me
The night is o-opening
Our angels are falling
and they will warm
they'll warm us
She asked, "Right Now?
Right Here?"
I'm feelin' soon,
soon my dear,
maybe california
maybe california.

As mothers we have our troubles
You'll leave them with emptiness
for their lifetime all their wishes will be dashed upon those cliffs
those cliffs

So let's be strong you and me
the night is o- it is opening
our angels are falling
and they will warm
they will warm us
She asked, "Right Now?
Right Here?"
I'm feelin' soon so soon my dear,
maybe california
maybe california
Until then there will be
starlight shining down
for every tear in every town

Part 1 of the Tori Amos interview from SXSW starts today on LP33.tv


http://www.hereinmyhead.com/2009/04/part-1-of-the-tori-amos-interview-from-sxsw-starts-today-on-lp33tv/

http://www.hereinmyhead.com/?p=626






http://www.hereinmyhead.com/2009/04/tonights-london-show-is-postponed-due-to-illness/

http://www.hereinmyhead.com/?p=629

Everythingtori.com reports:

Unfortunately Tori has had to postpone her show tonight at London’s Savoy Theater due to illness.

Tori is hugely disappointed, this being the first time in her 20-year career that she has had to postpone a show due to illness.

The show will now take place on Monday, May 11, 2009. Tickets will remain valid for the new date and customers can check with their respective ticket outlets for more information.




Maybe California visualette and download at Spinner.com [Apr. 27th, 2009|06:15 pm]
himhdotcom

http://www.hereinmyhead.com/2009/04/maybe-california-visualette-and-download-at-spinnercom/

http://www.hereinmyhead.com/?p=633

From Spinner.com:

“There are people in our lives, and we all know them, that are able to give even in the darkest of times,” Amos, who has an 8-year-old daughter, Natashya, says. “Even when they seem depleted. But somehow by giving, they gain this magical light. Even the most giving person needs a gift every once and a while, just to know they are seen and appreciated. ‘Maybe California’ is my gift to you.”









Part 2 of the Tori Amos interview from SXSW it out on LP33.tv


http://www.hereinmyhead.com/2009/04/part-2-of-the-tori-amos-interview-from-sxsw-it-out-on-lp33tv/

http://www.hereinmyhead.com/?p=635











http://www.hereinmyhead.com/2009/04/give-and-curtain-call-visualettes/

Visualettes for Give and Curtain Call are on YouTube (by seenINsoul). Thanks goes to Rach. for letting us know!







A Mother’s Day Gift from Tori Amos

http://www.hereinmyhead.com/2009/04/a-mothers-day-gift-from-tori-amos/

http://www.hereinmyhead.com/?p=640

Download “Maybe California” as an mp3, a ringtone, and a video — along with a special personal message.




Part 3 of the Tori Amos interview from SXSW it out on LP33.tv


http://www.hereinmyhead.com/2009/04/part-3-of-the-tori-amos-interview-from-sxsw-it-out-on-lp33tv/

http://www.hereinmyhead.com/?p=642

I'm a little late...haven't been online much. Thanks to monkeyloaf and hereinmyhead.....

http://www.hereinmyhead.com/2009/04/next-week-lp33tv-a-4-part-video-series-and-free-song-download/

http://www.hereinmyhead.com/?p=622

Starting Monday April 27th, LP33.tv will be releasing a 4 part interview with Tori from SxSW! “The up close and personal time we had with Tori in Austin was almost too good to be true.” But the best part is that they will be letting fans have a free download of “Maybe California”! Part 1 starts on Monday the 27th and continues until Thursday the 30th. Thursday will also be the day we are letting fans have a free download of “Maybe California” !!

So mark your calendar for next week and stay tuned:
Part 1 - Monday April 27th
Part 2 - Tuesday April 28th
Part 3 - Wednesday April 29th
Part 4 - Thursday April 30th with a free download of ‘Maybe California’