Tori Amos
Tori Amos[7] (born Myra Ellen Amos; August 22, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range.[8] Having already begun composing instrumental pieces on piano, Amos won a full scholarship to the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University at the age of five, the youngest person ever to have been admitted. She had to leave at the age of eleven when her scholarship was discontinued for what Rolling Stone described as "musical insubordination".[9] Amos was the lead singer of the short-lived 1980s pop group Y Kant Tori Read before achieving her breakthrough as a solo artist in the early 1990s. Her songs focus on a broad range of topics, including sexuality, feminism, politics, and religion.
Tori Amos
Myra Ellen Amos
- Ellen Amos
- Tess Makes Good
August 22, 1963
Newton, North Carolina, U.S.
Singer-songwriter
- Vocals
- piano
- keyboards
1979–present
Her charting singles include "Crucify", "Silent All These Years", "God", "Cornflake Girl", "Caught a Lite Sneeze", "Professional Widow", "Spark", "1000 Oceans", "Flavor" and "A Sorta Fairytale", her most commercially successful single in the U.S. to date.[10] Amos has received five MTV VMA nominations and eight Grammy Award nominations, and won an Echo Klassik award for her Night of Hunters classical crossover album. She is listed on VH1's 1999 "100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll" at number 71.[11]
Career[edit]
1979–1989: Career beginnings and Y Kant Tori Read[edit]
By the time she was 17, Amos had a stock of homemade demo tapes that her father regularly sent out to record companies and producers.[19] Producer Narada Michael Walden responded favorably: he and Amos cut some tracks together, but none were released.[19] Eventually, Atlantic Records responded to one of the tapes, and, when A&R man Jason Flom flew to Baltimore to audition her in person, the label was convinced and signed her.[18]
In 1984, Amos moved to Los Angeles to pursue her music career[19] after several years performing on the piano bar circuit in the Washington, D.C. area.
In 1986, Amos formed a musical group called Y Kant Tori Read, named for her difficulty with sight-reading.[27] In addition to Amos, the group was composed of Steve Caton (who would later play guitars on all of her albums until 1999), drummer Matt Sorum, bass player Brad Cobb and, for a short time, keyboardist Jim Tauber. The band went through several iterations of songwriting and recording; Amos has said interference from record executives caused the band to lose its musical edge and direction during this time. Finally, in July 1988, the band's self-titled debut album, Y Kant Tori Read, was released. Although its producer, Joe Chiccarelli, stated that Amos was very happy with the album at the time,[28] Amos has since criticized it, once remarking: "The only good thing about that album is my ankle high boots."[29]
Following the album's commercial failure and the group's subsequent disbanding, Amos began working with other artists (including Stan Ridgway, Sandra Bernhard, and Al Stewart) as a backup vocalist. She also recorded a song called "Distant Storm" for the film China O'Brien. In the credits, the song is attributed to a band called Tess Makes Good.[30]
In print[edit]
Amos and her music have been the subject of numerous official and unofficial books, as well as academic critique, including Tori Amos: Lyrics (2001) illustrated by Herb Leonhard, and an earlier biography, Tori Amos: All These Years (1996) by Kalen Rogers.[82][83][84]
Released in conjunction with The Beekeeper, Amos co-authored an autobiography with rock music journalist Ann Powers titled Piece by Piece (2005). The book's subject is Amos' interest in mythology and religion, exploring her songwriting process, rise to fame, and her relationship with Atlantic Records.[85][86]
Image Comics released Comic Book Tattoo (2008),[87] a collection of comic stories, each based on or inspired by songs recorded by Amos. Editor Rantz Hoseley worked with Amos to gather 80 different artists for the book, including Neil Gaiman, Carla Speed McNeil, Mark Buckingham, C.B. Cebulski, Nikki Cook, Hope Larson, John Ney Reiber, Ryan Kelly, Pia Guerra, David Mack, and Leah Moore.[88]
Tori Amos: In the Studio (2011) by Jake Brown features an in-depth look at Amos' career, discography, and recording process.[89] Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos (2013) by Adrienne Trier-Bieniek explores the ways women are represented in pop culture and the many-layered relationships female fans build with feminist musicians in general and with Tori Amos in particular.[90]
Tori Amos' Boys for Pele (2018) by Amy Gentry uses a blend of memoir, criticism, and aesthetic theory in order to argue that the aesthetics of disgust are useful of thinking in a broader way about women's experience of all art forms.[91] Amos released her second memoir, called Resistance: A Songwriter's Story of Hope, Change, and Courage on 5 May 2020.[92][93]
Tori Amos: Little Earthquakes (2022) by Tori Amos and Neil Gaiman is an official graphic novel celebrating 30 years of Tori Amos' breakout album Little Earthquakes.[94]
Studio albums
On May 21, 2020, Amos was invited to and gave special remarks at her alma mater Johns Hopkins University's 2020 Commencement ceremony.[155] Other notable guest speakers during the virtual ceremony included Reddit co-founder and commencement speaker Alexis Ohanian; philanthropist and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force; and senior class president Pavan Patel.[156]
Amos appears as a wedding singer in the film Mona Lisa Smile.[157] She previously auditioned for a role as a member of Beverly's band, Cherry Bomb, in the 1986 film Howard the Duck.[158] She did a cover of "losing my religion" by R.E.M and "Butterfly" in John Singletons Higher Learning. Her song "Talula" featured in the epic disaster film Twister (1996), "Professional Widow" in the action film Escape from L.A. (1996), "Siren" featured in the romantic drama Great Expectations (1998), the songs "'Murder' He Says" and "You Belong To Me" in the film Mona Lisa Smile (2003) and "Flicker" in the film Audrie & Daisy (2016), while numerous songs of hers were included in television series soundtracks[159] such as
