With Strange Little Girls, Tori Amos approached the covers album as concept album, offering reinterpretations of 12 diverse male-authored tracks from the perspectives of an assortment of female characters. The project was inspired originally by by the homophobic and misogynistic messages which Amos believed to be prevalent in popular song at the beginning of the 21st century.

“People were talking to me about how popular music was getting more violent,” she recalled in Piece by Piece. “Male songwriters were saying these really malicious things … and I really felt … that a generalized image of the antiwoman, antigay heterosexual man had hijacked Western male heterosexuality and brought it to the mediocrity of the moment.”

The innovation of Strange Little Girls is to extend this debate into the realm of rock, and to recognise mainstream music as one of the primary cultural spheres in which gender roles get played out and patriarchal ideology disseminated. Supplemented by superb Cindy Sherman-inspired photography, the album is a rewarding and subversive work that boldly challenges the listener to reassess their relationship not only to each of these songs, but also to the wider cultural attitudes that they embody and endorse.

“I wanted to complement the significance and scope of what she was doing. I felt like we were really in tune together, with what we were searching for,” recalled Adrian Belew, the project’s guitarist. “It was very comfortable working with her. I was surprised at the whole of the record [when I first heard it]. The songs I was unfamiliar with, in the context of what I had played, really changed the way I saw her as a producer and what she had envisioned. I frequently sign Strange Little Girls CDs, and the evidence is there that this record is important to people and they make the association between me and Tori and my contribution to the record. And then I realize they were probably turned onto me by Tori, and that’s an extraordinary thing for a musician to know. It is reflective of the community she builds in her work.”

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Songs of Tori Amos – Season 6 selections referenced in the episode

• New Age
  • KK is team FOX
  • JV and MM are team FUCKS.
• 97 Bonnie and Clyde

As she turned 50 in the spotlight, Tori Amos’ 2014 album Unrepentant Geraldines dropped and was greeted with headlines trumpeting the singer-songwriter’s “return to form” and “comeback”. But here’s the kicker: she never went anywhere.

Although she had written a musical for the stage (The Light Princess, 2013), and composed a 21st century song cycle (Night of Hunters, 2011), Unrepentant Geraldines was Amos’ first record of entirely original compositions in five years, since Abnormally Attracted to Sin (2009). If that album found Amos floating above a palette of darkly-glowing synths and sultry beats, then Geraldines was firmly grounded in what many would deem the Amos “signature” sound: a foundation built around soulful, churchy organs, classical-complex pianoscapes, and pristinely-orchestrated vocal arrangements (exemplified on the single “Promise”, which prominently features her then-15 year old daughter Natashya).

The romantic and lush album evokes and references other key moments in Amos’ catalog, while somehow possessing a distinct energy that distinguishes it as its own living, breathing experience. “Each song had to tell a story that you understood without needing to hear another song to make it make sense,” Tori told me at the time of the records release. “Although some of them are interconnected, the songs, but they needed to live on their own.” There’s no rigid adherence to any one specific style of music or instrumentation, no concept to be beholden to, and yes, while there are influences from past albums, Geraldines deploys them with fresh style and in an alchemic, organic way.

The album possesses the kind of wildness of spirit that has always permeated Amos’ work, but here that oft-explosive vivacity is contained and refined on songs “16 Shades of Blue”, with it’s emotionally articulate swagger; and on the psychedelic sonic Fata Morgana of the title track. There is a noticeable confidence in the songs — in the writing, in the delivery, and in the bright verisimilitude of her compositional landscape. Also adventurous are her lyrical arrangements and vocal delivery. “I’ve told you many times: I sound like a fairy on crack. I know that! So you have to surrender to what your pipes are.”

Please join Kristen, Matt and Joey as they tackle a pivotal moment in Tori’s discography and history. Messing With The Master: Unrepentant Geraldines is available wherever you check out podcasts.

Playlists

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Content warning: this episode discusses pregnancy and child loss. Please take care while listening.

On this week's episode, we book a round trip ticket To Venus and Back. Tori's surprisingly prompt follow -up to 1998's From the Choirgirl Hotel. After an epic world tour, Tori had implied that she'd be taking a break from recording for a while and planned to release a live album with a few new bonus tracks. As Tori's want to do, those bonus tracks developed into a full -blown 11 -track album with a bonus live disc that was released on September 21st, 1999, my 17th birthday. Thank you very much.

To Venus and Back is deeply beloved by fans and for good reason. It shows Tori and her band, Matt Chamberlain on drums, Jon Evans on bass, and Steve Caton on guitars at the height of their ensemble powers, and Tori at her most sonically experimental. As Tori herself once instructed, if it's too loud, turn it up. And that's precisely what she does on To Venus and Back.

The songs feel like an organic extension of the Choirgirl sound, but to say they sounded all similar to one another would be listener malpractice. Venus occupies a sonic space that is truly unlike anything Tori has done up to that point or has done since. The mixing, the engineering, the drum looping, the vocal distortions, the manipulation of the Bosendorfer, the introduction of new and strange synthesizer samples.

Every singular moment is its own dynamic piece of a dark, twisty, truly otherworldly puzzle that Tori has constructed with this record. It's cliche to say it was ahead of its time in 1999, but given how fresh and bold and immersive it sounds in the year of Our Lord 2024, no one would argue that Tori truly wrote, performed, and produced a collection of songs that pushed not only her own boundaries, but the boundaries of her listeners.

Perhaps Tori summed it up best herself in the lyric from Spring Haze when she instructs us that quote, the only way out is to go so far in. So join us as we break the terror of the urban spell.

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• KK playlist
• MM playlist