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[[Image:Toriamos.jpg|thumb|Tori Amos]]
'''Tori Amos''' (born Myra Ellen Amos on August 22, 1963) is an American singer/songwriter and vocalist known for her unique and proficient style of piano playing, as well as for her intimate brand of songwriting. Amos has released 9 solo studio albums and numerous B-sides to date, and has gathered a notoriously devoted following ("Ears With Feet") due to her eccentric personality and intense live shows.
==Background==
After recovering from the mess of YKTR, Amos later recalled that what turned her music around was rediscovering the piano, an instrument she had nearly abandoned. She then realized that she could never separate from it again, and that she should just do what she wants to, whether it's accepted or not. This reversal in thought brought about her debut album ''Little Earthquakes'', centered around her piano and exploring themes like religious guilt, relationships, and, perhaps most famously, her own rape, released in 1992. This album shot Amos into the public's critically-favorable awareness, and began building her fanbase. Amos has described this album as her diary, and fans often find it as one of the most straightforward and accessible.
In 1994, Amos released her second album ''Under the Pink'', which she described as an impressionist painting. This description revealed itself in the LP's more metaphorical lyrics, orchetral orchestral instrumentation, and references to literature and history. It's title refers to the idea of going beneath the stereotypes of femininity, and many songs deal with women's relationships with each other, particularly those related to betrayal. It is generally considered Amos's most classically influenced record. Near the end of the UTP tour, Amos parted ways with Eric Rosse, her boyfriend of seven years who had also produced her first two albums. This, and other relationships with what Amos referred to as "baby demons," greatly changed her, as well as her next album.
''Boys for Pele'' was released in 1996, and was an extreme departure from her previous works, featuring her Bosendorfer piano, a harpsichord, gospel choirs, church bells, brass, a Leslie Cabinet, and many other miscellaneous instruments. The lyrics were also much more metaphorical, associative, and complex, either being praised for their brilliance or dismissed as self-indulgent. Amos has described the album as a novel. This was also the first time Amos had ever self-produced. She would later state that she wouldn't know who she'd be today if she hadn't made the record, as it was about her "finding her own flame," and had greatly expanded and strengthened her voice. The subsequent tour was famously intense, and the album itself is generally the favorite of many fans, or thought of as the most "perfect."
Her next album of new material, ''To Venus and Back'', was released in 1999 (conversationally on the same day as NIN's album [[The Fragile]]), although it wasn't planned that way. Amos had originally wanted to release a collection of B-sides and a live disc, but new material began to unexpectedly come to her. The final project resulted in a double album of one disc new material and one disc live tracks from the FTCH tour. The first disc has a decidedly electronic feel, and was once described by Amos's good friend writer Neil Gaiman as "a collection of greatest hits from outer space." This is because there is no direct tie between all songs besides their atmospheric similarities and scientifically flavored language.
Between TVAB and her next album ''Strange Little Girls'', released in 2001, Amos suffered another miscarriage before having a baby girl named Natashya Lorien Hawley in 2000. SLG began when Amos was nursing her daughter while watching all of the hateful music being praised on TV and radio. She decided to make an album of covers of songs written by men, told from the female perspective, to shed some light on what was really being said. She brought in guitarist [[Adrian Belew]] on some tracks, and generally produced an eclectic sounding LP, ranging from more acoustic vibes to metal-tinged sounds. Each song was told from the perspective of an individual female, with corresponding artwork. Most fans list it near the bottom of their listfavorite albums of hers, if only for the fact that it wasn't original, Amos-penned material.
Her 2003 album ''Scarlet's Walk'' was also a concept album, written from the point of view of Scarlet, who is a woman traveling across America. Each song is about her encounter with someone/something, and moves throughout the states. It is a generally more acoustic and mellow work, spanning 18 tracks, and also a fan favorite. It was Tori's first album on Epic Records.
In 1994, Amos also co-founded RAINN - Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network - the only 24/7, toll-free hotline in America, geared towards helping victims and survivors of abuse. She performed a benefit concert for the organization in 1997, at which her friend [[Maynard James Keenan]] of [[Tool]] performed, and has since donated to it repeatedly.
Amos was voted the fifth best live act by Rolling Stone in 2003, as she is known for her intense live shows and productive touring habits. Her setlists vary every single night, and since she began touring with her band - Matt Chamberlain, Jon Evans, Steve Caton (1988-1999), and Dan Phelps (2007) - in 1998, she usually has a solo set in the middle of each show. Since 1991, she has performed over 1,000 official shows. Amos is also known for her devoted fans, dubbed as "Ears With Feet" or Toriphiles. When the internet was just becoming popular, she was noted to have the most websites dedicated to her, and those still around today are extremely extensive in all areas of her career, and also have very active forums. As such she often makes use of her online fans: in 1996, her song Caught A Lite Sneeze was the first MP3 ever to be available for free download on the internet. She's also utilized such methods for ''Legs & Boots'' and other distributing systems. Amos is often misconstrued as either "kooky" or too serious. She has admitted to "playing kooky for the British," as that's the pigeonhole they put her in, which she finds amusing. She's also stated that her sense of humor was "more like a butter knife" than a butcher knife. She also loves red wine (and turned Maynard onto it.) She and Neil Gaiman, author of The Sandman, regularly name-check each other in interviews and reference each other in their art, such as the song Tear in Your Hand and his character Delirium.
==Connection to NIN==
[[Trent Reznor]] and Amos originally met in mutual admiration for each other's respective debut albums, sometime in the early nineties. They recognized similar approaches in emotional expression, despite vastly different musical styles. Both artists influenced the other's work in some way; Reznor even admitted that he would listen to ''Little Earthquakes'' every day while recording [[The Downward Spiral]]. [http://www.thanatopsic.org/music/trivial/tori-trent-rmta.html] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcMEKppnpV8] From there a collaboration formed: Reznor contributed vocals to Amos's single "Past The Mission" for her 1994 album ''Under The Pink.'' His vocals on the track were uncharacteristically, and somewhat unrecognizably, soft and pleasant, and sang of finding hope in a relationship after trauma.
Amos has also performed the first two lines of "[[Hurt (song)]]" in concert - mainly in 1996, 1998, and between 1994-1999 - and has made allusions to [[Nine Inch Nails]] in her solo work, most notably in "Precious Things" from ''Little Earthquakes'' and "Caught a Lite Sneeze" from ''Boys for Pele.'' Reznor also most likely borrowed the phrase "starfucker" for his song [[Starfuckers, Inc.]] from her 1996 song Professional Widow, since both are rumored to be about one Courtney Love.
The two were obviously once close friends, and several interviews from the mid nineties detail random encounters between the two, such as the "cursed chicken" story. [http://www.thanatopsic.org/music/trivial/tori-trent-rmta.html] Some mutual fans of the artists speculate their friendship once reached beyond that into romantic territory, based on these and other interviews, various NIN and Amos lyrics, and other similarities in work. Their relationship is currently undetermined, though it is viewed as broken, based on the same aforementioned things.
*[http://www.toriamos.com/ Official website]
*[http://www.myspace.com/toriamos Official MySpace]
*[http://www.thedent.com/index.php The Dent Archives]
*[http://www.yessaid.com yessaid]
*[http://www.hereinmyhead.com hereinmyhead]
*[http://www.atforumz.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=23 @forumz]
*[http://www.feeltheword.net/forum feeltheword]
[[Category:Related to NIN]]