Tori Amos - Strange Little Girls

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Tori Amos conjures up a dozen of her best impressions on Strange Little Girls, a cover album that envelops about as much of the singer's split-psyche as it does her varied musical influences.

On this her seventh album Amos has decided to do a concept/cover album. It features 12 songs written by men that she reinterprets in some very interesting and innovative ways. As the official Atlantic Press Release for the album states, "All the songs on the album were written by men, but are performed by Tori from the perspectives of a diverse cast of female characters." Amos told Next magazine about her concept of doing covers "I started cutting my teeth there and then I was playing in gay bars when I was 13. You get a very different exposure to music at 13, playing for other people to sing along with in a piano bar, having to follow people and their style and to crawl into the songs. You learn how other people hear songs which brings us to this record. It was not just what men say and how a woman hears them-that really intrigued me-but even more so, it was what men heard other men say."

The album begins with The Velvet Underground's "New Age" where Tori sounds a bit like a female Robert Plant. In fact the song is very Led Zeppelin like. It ebbs and flows back and forth quietly through your mind like cleansing waters, preparing you for what’s coming up. From there the album skips to the haunting version of Eminem’s "97 Bonnie and Clyde." Backed only by a haunting string section Amos recites the lyrics to the Eminem track, only this time we see it from the mothers point of view, hardly conscious, but just capable of passing on what she hears her husband say to her child before dumping her in the bottom of a lake. The strings give the song a kind of scary movie type vibe that is sure to creep out quite a few listeners.

The title track and first single "Strange Little Girls" picks the beat back up, as the track is pretty faithful to the original performed by The Stranglers. When asked by OOR magazine about a song interpreted differently than the original Amos said "Strange little girl by the Stranglers was a clear case. Men associated the song immediately to a woman who they felt attracted to. They thought Strange little girl was very sexy. But if a woman sings it, that's totally not the point. In that case, it's about a girl in danger. Who has to choose whether she will protect herself or that she will be swallowed by the danger, whatever it may be."

"Enjoy the Silence" follows, rawly, with very little music, just a touch of piano, but mostly vocals, harkening back to Amos’s earlier albums. It’s followed by the slinky exotic sounding "I'm Not In Love" which seems to come back at the original song, by 10cc, almost sarcastically. "Rattlesnakes" and "Time" lull the listener into a false since of security before shattering it with a surprisingly rock version of Neil Young’s "Heart of Gold." Amos’s version of the Young classic is almost unrecognizable as she wails like a banshee, over swirling, whining guitar licks, sounding a bit like alterna rockers Garbage.

Amos's continues on a cover of the Boomtown Rats' "I Don't Like Mondays," which she turns into a quietly violent lullaby, about school shootings and the violence that plagues America. Amos’s preoccupation with death and guns continues on her take of the Beatle's "Happiness is a Warm Gun." It starts with sad news reports about the murder of Lennon, as the song creeps along speeches of the arms lobby, crop up intermittently over the next ten conspiring minutes.

Up next for Amos is Slayers’ "Raining Blood" which takes on even creepier undertones when coupled with the recent events that occurred in NYC and Washington D.C. The sparse composition features just a piano and Amos singing lines like "Raining blood from a lacerated sky/Bleeding it's honor/Creating my structure/Now I shall reign in blood." Amos told OOR magazine of the vision she had when the "raining blood girl" visited her "Blood is raining. It's falling out of the air on certain countries which are so terribly violent against women. Like Afghanistan, where women can't even go on the street without a man, are not allowed to study and often get raped. And these horrors can not be lead in any way to religion. It's straight from the spirit of men." Joe Jackson’s "Real Men" a song about tolerance and understanding does a great job of tying the album together before closing it out.

Strange Little Girls may scare a few of her fans away that want the "old" Tori back but it is also sure to break her to an even larger audience.


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On this her seventh album Amos has decided to do a concept/cover album. It features 12 songs written by men that she reinterprets in some very interesting and innovative ways. As the official Atlantic Press Release for the album states, "All the songs on the album were written by men, but are performed by Tori from the perspectives of a diverse cast of female characters." Amos told Next magazine about her concept of doing covers "I started cutting my teeth there and then I was playing in gay bars when I was 13. You get a very different exposure to music at 13, playing for other people to sing along with in a piano bar, having to follow people and their style and to crawl into the songs. You learn how other people hear songs which brings us to this record. It was not just what men say and how a woman hears them-that really intrigued me-but even more so, it was what men heard other men say." The album begins with The Velvet Underground's "New Age" where Tori sounds a bit like a female Robert Plant. In fact the song is very Led Zeppelin like. It ebbs and flows back and forth quietly through your mind like cleansing waters, preparing you for what’s coming up. From there the album skips to the haunting version of Eminem’s "97 Bonnie and Clyde." Backed only by a haunting string section Amos recites the lyrics to the Eminem track, only this time we see it from the mothers point of view, hardly conscious, but just capable of passing on what she hears her husband say to her child before dumping her in the bottom of a lake. The strings give the song a kind of scary movie type vibe that is sure to creep out quite a few listeners. The title track and first single "Strange Little Girls" picks the beat back up, as the track is pretty faithful to the original performed by The Stranglers. When asked by OOR magazine about a song interpreted differently than the original Amos said "Strange little girl by the Stranglers was a clear case. Men associated the song immediately to a woman who they felt attracted to. They thought Strange little girl was very sexy. But if a woman sings it, that's totally not the point. In that case, it's about a girl in danger. Who has to choose whether she will protect herself or that she will be swallowed by the danger, whatever it may be." "Enjoy the Silence" follows, rawly, with very little music, just a touch of piano, but mostly vocals, harkening back to Amos’s earlier albums. It’s followed by the slinky exotic sounding "I'm Not In Love" which seems to come back at the original song, by 10cc, almost sarcastically. "Rattlesnakes" and "Time" lull the listener into a false since of security before shattering it with a surprisingly rock version of Neil Young’s "Heart of Gold." Amos’s version of the Young classic is almost unrecognizable as she wails like a banshee, over swirling, whining guitar licks, sounding a bit like alterna rockers Garbage. Amos's continues on a cover of the Boomtown Rats' "I Don't Like Mondays," which she turns into a quietly violent lullaby, about school shootings and the violence that plagues America. Amos’s preoccupation with death and guns continues on her take of the Beatle's "Happiness is a Warm Gun." It starts with sad news reports about the murder of Lennon, as the song creeps along speeches of the arms lobby, crop up intermittently over the next ten conspiring minutes. Up next for Amos is Slayers’ "Raining Blood" which takes on even creepier undertones when coupled with the recent events that occurred in NYC and Washington D.C. The sparse composition features just a piano and Amos singing lines like "Raining blood from a lacerated sky/Bleeding it's honor/Creating my structure/Now I shall reign in blood." Amos told OOR magazine of the vision she had when the "raining blood girl" visited her "Blood is raining. It's falling out of the air on certain countries which are so terribly violent against women. Like Afghanistan, where women can't even go on the street without a man, are not allowed to study and often get raped. And these horrors can not be lead in any way to religion. It's straight from the spirit of men." Joe Jackson’s "Real Men" a song about tolerance and understanding does a great job of tying the album together before closing it out. Strange Little Girls may scare a few of her fans away that want the "old" Tori back but it is also sure to break her to an even larger audience.