And that I couldn’t be anybody’s I had to be my own. And so, I knew then, that I had a big fight ahead of me. This was a very different thing because this wasn’t the blues/R&B approach. But straddling the piano and making the piano a viable instrument with songs being built around it, that was gone since the Carole King days. Because what I was achieving really hadn’t been done in that way, because folk women were being embraced. was being clear with myself that I didn’t want that. But at least you’ve got to get your palette, your paint, your canvas, and say, “I’m not choosing to tell this story, which is doing anything to have success.” I don’t want that kind of success. And when I say “who you want to be,” that’s going to evolve. When you don’t need that anymore, because you have an understanding and an agreement with yourself on who you want to be. It’s an internal fight, that when you need other people’s approval, when you walk in a room, you’re everybody’s - or anybody’s - girl. So I had to then look at my part in the misrepresentation of my soul, and how I pulled the trigger. I had to put the pieces back together, because I hadn’t been used to being a failure. I learned a lot by not really picking the photographer myself, not working with a proper stylist who understood what you were trying to do and can help you show that. When Y Kant Tori Read was decimated, the image wasn’t a good choice. Because at the time, there were all kinds of artists that I liked that were doing it. There were categories of more artistic, more commercial, and in my mind, wasn’t a dirty word. Those two other women were being supported to be true to their art.
There was another gal that was coming out at that time called Melissa Etheridge.
Across town, somebody called Tracy Chapman was in the studio recording her first record. From child prodigy to “vapid bimbo,” I think, was one of the quotes - it was a galaxy apart. I had just recently come out of the Y Kant Tori Read experience, which catapulted me - drove me - to begin making this music. I surrounded myself with the stories and the thinkers that formed me, not what those that had the power to push the button wanted me to be formed with.” cummings, Emily Dickinson and also the visual artists. Looking back at the album, track by track for Rolling Stone, Amos recalls, “Coming out of beating myself up about the choices I had made, I just rolled up my sleeves and grasped at all of the poetry that had ever meant anything to me,” Amos says. “I had come from child prodigy to ‘vapid bimbo,’ and I had to look at my part in the misrepresentation of my soul and how I pulled the trigger.”ĭiscoveries Amos made about this self-adulteration led to much of the thematic material on Little Earthquakes, which was vibrant, self-aware and sometimes searingly difficult. “I had to put the pieces back together, because I hadn’t been used to being a failure,” she says. After the spectacular failure of her first major-label release, a leather-and-metal project called Y Kant Tori Read, Amos was defeated. Little Earthquakes‘s genre-defining success didn’t come easy. Amos’ beautifully edgy debut was filled with confessional, piano-driven tracks exploring the complexities of finding one’s voice and throwing off the shackles of religion that helped set the stage for the explosion of women songwriters in the 1990s. Tori Amos’ first seasonal album Midwinter Graces, with its placid arrangements and guest vocals by her nine-year-old daughter, sounds light years removed from her first solo release, 1992’s Little Earthquakes.