Here is my personal #ToriAmos Top-25 Covers List. It basically boiled down to the songs that mean the most to me, or have the greatest impact on me. Many of these are songs I grew up playing on the piano, before I even know of Tori Amos. Many of them are also songs she has played for me in concert, which (of course) makes them extra special to me. I could have easily made it a top-50 list, there were so many songs that I had to cut! I’m just glad I found the time to submit my ballot before the deadline of March 31. ;-)
Personal Top-25 Favorite Tori Amos covers
List submitted by Chris Richardson (@ThunderySkye)
(I was her guest in the audience of this recording, done for the Jonathan Ross show in 1992. She was so nervous. We were kids who liked talking to each other, so much, and she loved Sandman and I loved that she’d put me in a song. It seems like yesterday.)
now I have
been slightly shy
and I can smell a pinch of hope
to almost have allowed once fingers
to stroke
the fingers I was given to touch with
but careful, careful
there lies my passion, hidden
there lies my love
I’ll hide it under a blanket
lull it to sleep
~YES, absolutely! This is possibly my #1 favorite cover, but not sure about the ranking yet. It’s up there real high though.
I remember walking into the studio… Robert was there and we were tracking “Down By The Seaside” with his musicians, I was playing piano… and singing while he was tracking live. And I think: to watch him work with something that has stayed with me… the generosity of sharing his muse, his creative process. This might sound a bit… strange, but watching Robert perform made me really rethink how to be a woman, because… I think there’s a real, humm… femininity with the “hammer of Thor”, you know? [laughts] There’s this duality that he posesses and at a time when a lot of women in music were circumcising their femininity, thinking that that made them stronger, I began to realise that that it didn’t made me stronger at all, but just empty. And so, maybe, to see a guy not shying away from the Ancient Feminine and the Land, the Great Mother, made me realise that… that I needed to claim it for myself. And so, yeah, he was a real beacon at a time when I needed that.
(I was her guest in the audience of this recording, done for the Jonathan Ross show in 1992. She was so nervous. We were kids who liked talking to each other, so much, and she loved Sandman and I loved that she’d put me in a song. It seems like yesterday.)
