Tori Amos is annoying.

"Woohoo, the time is getting closer! Woohoo! The time is getting near!"

I mean, come on now, what the fuck?

But it's unarguably true, and put in an almost modest and wistful way. People pay for such lines. I mean, I'm glad she's a bit wry and doesn't have plastic surgery and everything.

"Woohoo, the time is getting closer! Woohoo! The time is getting near!"

Again, what if it's true? It might not be an event that merits cheering, but if it is I am certainly not annoyed if a professional singer puts her glee on a record. Christmas gifts, an evening with someone she fancies, that sort of thing.

And she should be slapped with a slimey, wriggling trout for daring to cover the Stranglers and Slayer.

While we're on the subject, just what the hell is "Cornflake Girl" all about? I mean,....I haven't the foggiest.

Women backstabbing each other, to give the short and incomplete answer... but I don't think asking "What is [insert Tori song here] about?" is going to yield very much in the way of productive answers.

Hello, Scaredy Cat. We've met before. Tori's pretty much my favourite singer, y'know.

All artists, especially singer-songwriters, have their fair share of annoying fans... a lot of the particularly rabid Tori obsessives are frightening, true, but it's about as accurate to call all Tori fans annoying as it is to call all Bruce Springsteen or Neil Young or Patti Smith fans annoying.

"God sometimes you just don't come through
Do you need a woman to look after you"

Still, she does have things I like about her. She'd better be good in concert, 'cause I've got tickets to go see her next month.

-- Kingfish (jdsalmo...), July 28th, 2003.

Kingfish, if you meant that Tori's metaphorical musical/cultural/confessional balls are bigger than those of Dave Matthews, you're right.

And if you meant that her fans are way fatter than those of Dave Matthews, you're also right. So, um, well done.

that said, under the pink does sort of occupy a special place in my heart/cd collection (whereas little earthquakes...not quite as much because i've never owned a copy of it).

So many people just make this comparison mindlessly, and it's such a myth. They have similar vocal ranges (though there are at most... ten Tori songs where the resemblance is really strong) and they both do the skewed-perspective thing, but their respective aesthetics are very different. Kate deals with the world of the imagination while Tori deals with reality and experience (albeit in surreal terms); Kate is curiously sexless even when singing about sex, while Tori is *always* libidinous even when not singing about sex; Kate is very mannered and controlled in true performance art-stylee while Tori's raison d'etre has always been out-of-control drama and emotion.

I'll say it again: Tori's kookiness is much closer to Stevie Nicks' than it is to Kate Bush, and even that is tempered by her equally as strong resemblances to Courtney Love, Joni Mitchell etc. etc. at various different points.

(also ru55 t not to thread, plz)

Tori Amos makes profoundly uninteresting music -- so what, there's a lot of uninteresting artists out there. However, when there seems to be an inexplicable cult around this particular singer, with all of the members glorifying her essentially banal emotional lyrics and overwrought performance style, it begins to get a mite tedious. There's obviously a Kate Bush homage going on with Amos, even if only at the level of the proggy diva/auteur persona. She'd probably admit it if you asked her deferentially enough.

"Out-of-control drama and emotion"? Sara Brightman-level theatrics.

Another apt comparison with Kate Bush: her apologists, regardless of gender, seem to hyperbolically dance around their harbored desire to sleep with her, or at the least read her their poetry and have dinner together by candlelight. Or perhaps a shared bath.

Rant concluded.

Ha ha yes but all of those examples you cite make more sense (even if not a lot necessarily).

(weeps silent tears for the future of humanity)

this is what fans ARE, Stan, it's what they do! when i was a Metallica apologist i was dancing around the fact that i wanted to skateboard with James Hetfield and have him let me "touch his guitar"; i am a Metallica fan no longer because his guitar has become repellent to me

Well, who doesn't want to be a proggy diva/auteur persona?

But I will never get how a perfectly reasonable, intelligent person could stoop to the level of celebrity worship that it takes to be a big fan of Tori (or Bono, which I am also often subjected to). Even if her music was brilliant, which it's not, listening to it every day of your life seems a little unbalanced to me.

This is the case for pretty much every artist with a cult fan base. Tori's fans get stick because they're easy to stereotype as weeping girls in fairy wings, but I fail to see how they're any more obsessive than yer average middle-aged male music hack who worships Springsteen or Pink Floyd.

And really, listening to and becoming obsessed with songs (as opposed to singers) and putting them on repeat every single day... that's all part of loving music. For some reason I haven't listened to any Tori this week, which makes it pretty much the only week of the past seven years I haven't listened to a Tori song. I've listened to the Girls Aloud album four days in a row though, and I doubt that makes me unbalanced.

FUNNY YOU SHOULD SAY THAT... ;-)

It's hard for me to judge from this awful cynical vantage, but when does it stop being about liking music and become fantastical unicorn-worshipping fandom? Or lack of curiosity about all the other music in the world?

I still think Under the Pink is entirely terrific, and there are a ton of gorgeous songs that are still kinda affecting to me - "spark," "Hey Jupiter," "Playboy mommy," "Caught a lite sneeze," "raspberry swirl," "jackie's strength," etc.. Though I wonder if there will be any more? I haven't heard any Tori songs I much like from the last few albums.

But..but.. but.. Tori did a great cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"!! Does that count...?

</joke&rt;

She must hide! She covered SLTS as a B-side (was trying to find exact CD now, can't.)

But Dan that was a joke.