Many oddball moments in my life have intersected with Tori Amos songs. Like the time a boy who sat behind me in eighth grade sensually humped a chair while singing the chorus to her Boys for Pele hit “Caught a Light Sneeze,” or when a man at a Tiki bar in Hell’s Kitchen with avocado dip spread across his pants drunkenly accused me of being in a Tori Amos music video. Avocado Pants was right, though; I am in a Tori Amos music video—forever captured at an awkward My So-Called Life-influenced 16—and I’ve unabashedly loved Amos’ music from grade school to present day.
Amos grew up a Methodist minister’s daughter. She was the youngest person ever accepted to Baltimore’s prestigious Peabody Institute and was subsequently expelled at age 11 for insubordination. (The youngest expelled? It’s never been confirmed.) She’s a lifelong performer, a genius songwriter inspired by the likes of Kate Bush and Joni Mitchell, and a champion for survivors of sexual assault—her haunting a capella song “Me and a Gun” recounts her own experience, and she was formative in the founding of the Rape and Incest Nationwide Network in the 1990s.
