Acoustic Versions: Smells Like Teen Spirit

Tori Amos: Smells Like Teen Spirit

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I’m sure most of our readers know that Nirvana recorded an Unplugged album for MTV. However, Smells Like Teen Spirit was not on that album. Instead, Tori Amos was the one who remade the song as a solo piano ballad. The lyrics are all over the place, suggesting two or more teens who have gotten together to do… something. In Nirvana’s original version, the music suggests a rage that must soon boil over. But Amos finds the searching, and the fear that drives that rage. There is a lot of space in the music, and the narrator feels the urge to fill it with something. The listener is no closer to knowing how this will end, but we have more of an idea of how it started.

The image I have chosen for this post comes from a manga called Teen Spirit. The picture seemed perfect to me, but I have never read, (or even seen), the manga, so the picture might not be appropriate to the song at all. If Geoviki can’t fill us in, maybe a reader could tell us more in the comments. Thank you.

Nonsense: iieee

Tori Amos: iieee

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When it comes to nonsense songs usually they're a bit silly, or at least perceived that way. This song doesn't fit that category. It appeared on my favorite album of all time, Tori Amos' "from the choirgirl hotel". The album is quite dark, having been written in the aftermath and depression of having had three miscarriages.

In the song, Tori takes on God and religion as she is wont to do and asks why people must be made to sacrifice so much for him, and questioning the whole "God has a bigger plan for us" thing, as she can't see what the plan for losing a child could possibly be. The title of the song is actually a sort of chant. In interviews she has said that a small Native American boy's spirit visited her in the wake of her miscarriages and he often chanted this. But I take such things with a grain of salt, as she tends to get pretty outlandish in interviews. Regardless, it is certainly a chant and sounds somewhat Native-American in nature.

Cold: Winter

Tori Amos: Winter

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Every time I hear this song... I can see the dripping icicles hanging from the gutters, feel the chill of the snow piled on the lawns... and overhear the conversation between the father and the daughter - winter becomes a metaphor for loving... and leaving... and change's counterpart is constancy... and our hearts are warmed...

Thanks and Appreciation: Thank You

Tori Amos: Thank You

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I've never been a Led Zeppelin fan... so when I discovered this cover of their song, with Tori's ethereal vocal and exquisite piano, it gave me a fresh appreciation...

A dear friend used the lyrics as a poetry reading in her wedding ceremony 11 years ago - sadly, the sun and the mountains never had a chance to prove their challenged longevity, as the couple split up a few years later...

P.S. Aren't there some Kinks fans among our contributors? - I just stumbled across Ray Davies' lyrics to Thanksgiving Day and am dying to hear the song now!

Early: Baltimore

Tori Amos: Baltimore

Tori Amos would probably be none too pleased that I was giving this song any air time at all considering she doesn't consider it one of her finest moments (she's been quoted as calling this song "fucking horrible" and "disgusting"), and it came from a time before she had found her own voice. In fact, it was written before she was even Tori Amos, it was back when she was still going by Ellen Amos (her given name being Myra Ellen Amos). "Baltimore" was written for a contest. She and her brother Mike wrote the song for a contest the Baltimore Orioles baseball team had commissioned for a theme song for the city back in 1980, when Tori was about 14 years old. Tori grew up in Maryland and was a sports fan, so it seemed natural, with her musical talents, to give it a go.

It was her first recording. There were 500 copies of the 7" printed, she won the contest, which included a citation from the mayor and a cash prize. The song is nothing of what we know of the long-standing, grammy-nominated songwriter now, other than her voice. She went on to perform in clubs and hotel bars throughout high school in the Baltimore and Washington D.C. area before turning 18 and making her way out to Los Angeles.

Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse: Me and a Gun

Tori Amos: Me and a Gun

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I will never forget the effect this song had on me when I bought the CD upon its 1992 release - it has the same effect on me now: the hair prickles on the back of my neck, goosebumps raise on my arms and I have a difficult time breathing...

Listening to Tori's a cappella rendering of a rape at gunpoint makes me hope I am never in that situation - the fear, shock and numbness is palpable in her whispered vocals, cracking at times, as she tries to envision the island of Barbados and soft biscuits in Carolina, anything to escape in her head what is happening to her body...

The song is based on a true story - Tori later went on to found RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), a non-profit organization operating America's only national hotline for survivors of rape and sexual assault. The RAINN hotline is toll-free and 100% confidential. RAINN has helped more than 276,300 survivors and connects with more than 830 crisis centers around the country.

Tori's Survivor Story

"I'll never talk about it at this level again but let me ask you. Why have I survived that kind of night, when other women didn't?

How am I alive to tell you this tale when he was ready to slice me up? In the song I say it was Me and a Gun but it wasn't a gun. It was a knife he had. And the idea was to take me to his friends and cut me up, and he kept telling me that, for hours. And if he hadn't needed more drugs I would have been just one more news report, where you see the parents grieving for their daughter. And I was singing hymns, as I say in the song, because he told me to. I sang to stay alive. Yet I survived that torture, which left me urinating all over myself and left me paralyzed for years. That's what that night was all about, mutilation, more than violation through sex.

I really do feel as though I was psychologically mutilated that night and that now I'm trying to put the pieces back together again. Through love, not hatred. And through my music. My strength has been to open again, to life, and my victory is the fact that, despite it all, I kept alive my vulnerability."

Cry Cry Cry: 1000 Oceans

Tori Amos: 1000 Oceans

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This Tori Amos song is from her 1999 double-disc album "To Venus and Back", which featured a disc of new songs and a disc of live songs recorded during her previous tour. "1000 Oceans" was the last song on the disc, and as is typical for many artists, and almost always the case for Tori, the album ends with a melancholy ballad.

This particular song was inspired by the passing of her father-in-law and was written to help her husband deal with the grief. She sings about how she has cried "a thousand oceans" but would cry a thousand more if it meant bringing him back. It's a touching and beautiful song, that, though sad, feels more like a sympathetic hand squeeze or a shoulder to cry on.