I have a six-page Tori Amos interview due imminently in Record Collector (May 2026 issue). It was done over the telephone, something I’m finding harder and harder (a problem I’m intending to write about separately). I can’t be the only disabled person to have discovered myself in a strange, counter-intuitive bind when it comes to phone interviews (or ‘phoners’ in journalese). In almost every other situation, doing something from home is absolutely my best bet. Since a 40-foot fall in 2012, I’m in constant pain. Daily life is made tremendously difficult by it. It’s a life of pain, physical imbalance, walking sticks, wobbling, catheters, nerve damage, falling over. The best I can usually do is to make sure, every day, I find some moment of merriment, contentment and/or levity before the sun goes down. And usually I do find many.
But when it comes to interviews, I push for face-to-face (with video-call a very distant runner-up). It’s hard to explain, but if I’m with someone in the flesh, a lot of pressure falls away – my situation is immediately obvious (the walking sticks, the strange gait, the way I might awkwardly rearrange myself in a chair when the pain increases). There’s no pressure to conceal anything, because I can’t hope to conceal it, and, almost always, I can rely on the other party’s empathy if I need to shift about or stand up for a moment. I relax. The ability to focus returns. Panic is allayed. On the telephone, the only option I have if I need forbearance/patience of some kind is to say, “I’m in terrible pain”. And I’m just not going to interrupt a telephone interview to announce that my back hurts. It’s off the menu. So the only real option is: self-containment. But this causes me great tension both during and in the days leading up to an interview. I find it cognitively disruptive, trying to focus on the interview while simultaneously caught up in a kind of fretful self-monitoring process (am I OK? Is my body behaving? Will I get through this? Is there a good, deceptive note of levity in my voice? Am I doing ‘normal’ sufficiently well?). I become anxious. The likelihood increases of stammering, stuttering, getting flustered, forgetting what I’m saying. Then the fear of those things makes them more likely to happen. It seems un-winnable. Non-verbal information, the option of making eye contact, the sending of a reassuring smile from one party to the other… all that stuff that I find so grounding and rapport-enhancing is gone. That’s why lately I’ve been thinking of writing about the issue of freelancing when you’re disabled. I’m sure there are disabled journalists who’ve cracked the telephone problem (or perhaps don’t experience it in the first place, since I think I’m afflicted by it specifically because of the pain problem rather than the disability problem, even though the two are connected). When I finish a phone interview, which should be a wonderfully satisfying commission (what could be better than talking to an interesting, talented musician about their life and work?), I instead feel as if I’ve just put myself through an excruciating psychic mangle. I try to hold back from mentioning these problems to the people involved in setting up interviews (usually a PR company) – it’s an absolute last resort, because I don’t want to come across as manipulative (“you’ve got to do what I want because I have problems!”) I just state my preference for face-to-face, plus my willingness to travel to make it happen, and hope for the best. And I absolutely can see why the interviewee might have 101 equally valid reasons NOT to want face to face or even video.
So I put down the telephone to Tori feeling relief (I’ve got through it without losing my way mentally too badly! Hurrah!) but also a sadness that I couldn’t be wholly present. My brain had to inhabit multiple places at one time. I couldn’t be in a place of flowing, of ease, or of being able to respond dynamically to another person, or, where necessary, to pivot. I couldn’t be light on my feet. Concealing the effects of my physical lameness simply transferred the lameness to my mind. Maybe I would have been better off saying, up-front (and as quickly as possible, given the time constraints): “If I lose my way conversationally, or in terms of questions, here’s why”. This is just the kind of thing I’d love to find out more about from other people in my position – people who live with pain, but also do telephone interviews. There must be some of us.
But let’s talk about Tori: what an album! I think In Times Of Dragons is one of those ones that even the fans who dislike parts of her discography (quite often, they have reservations about: The Beekeeper, American Doll Posse and Abnormally Attracted To Sin, but some also have equivocal feelings about everything post-Scarlet, including Unrepentant Geraldines, Native Invader and Ocean To Ocean, while some pine for 90s Tori) are going to love. It’s a blend of Tori as singer/songwriter and synth experimentalist and, as with Ocean To Ocean from 2021, the reliably great Jon Evans (bass) and Matt Chamberlain (drums) are present. For an album that’s an allegorical reflection of the dismal state of US democracy, it’s a surprisingly inspiring, mobilising, touching and comforting work. I’m not necessarily a good arbiter, though, because I’ve found something to love at every single stage of Tori Amos’ recording career. I’m fortunate enough to have followed her work almost all the way through. She burst onto the UK scene during my final year at school and, along with a good friend of mine in English Lit, I was immediately enchanted. We called ourselves The Tori Amos Fanclub. I had just come through what was then one of the worst things ever to happen to me (being outed, at 16, to an entire school) and there just couldn’t have been a better time to listen to someone who not only appeared to know herself very well, but to be engaging in the most glorious, unexpurgated kind of self-expression. It was an exciting time to follow her, because our numbers seemed to swell every day, as her singles gradually got higher chart placings and Little Earthquakes won more and more people over. And she was all over television, too. We loved how different she seemed, with her whimsical but very intelligent and well-read personality, her undisguised eccentricity. Other women singing and playing the piano were emerging – Beverley Craven, Sarah McLachlan, Paula Cole. And they were all very good players and writers. But there was a blazing musicality to Tori that was quite astonishing to behold and which put her in a class by herself. I know the comparisons must be tedious for both parties – and I’m not likening them musically with this observation – but it really did feel as exciting as the emergence of Kate Bush ten years earlier. In addition to TV, she was also all over the press… in fact, I remember quite clearly seeing a magazine layout with captions revealing that she’d got her blue flares at the late, much-lamented Kensington Market. We lived about 20 minutes away, so I immediately went and got myself a pair (there were also wonderful rows of unsold Levi flares from the 1970s and I grabbed some canary yellow ones, which I ended up destroying a few years later, climbing over some railings in a pub courtyard). I still have them, but they’ve been patched a bit too much and also have paint on them.
It wasn’t until 2005 that I heard Tori’s actual first album, the self-titled 1988 LP by the group Y Kant Tori Read. It plays just like a solo album. And it turns out that there’s nothing really embarrassing about it. Contrary to rumour, it’s not any sort of abomination. It’s rather beautiful. Tori is in great voice, her writing style is already falling into place but it’s clearly been commercially tempered by someone (or someones). It’s as if she’s half going in a Desmond Child/Diane Warren/Rick Nowels direction and half going her own sweet way, with those wonderful flights of fancy in the lyrics, the soaring voice and extravagant, dramatic melodies. Sometimes, great music can be made when a person’s commercial and anti-commercial instincts are tugging at each other. I think that’s why YKTR still sounds good in 2026. How can anyone hear the glorious On The Boundary or Floating City and now be utterly enraptured? In hindsight, it’s obvious she was not only on her way to greatness but that, really, greatness was already with her. You can hear the last traces of the more commercial YKTR sound in parts of Little Earthquakes – China, for example, would not have sounded out of place next toYKTR’s Fire On The Side.
Do you find, with your favourite artists, that when you return to an album of theirs which initially underwhelmed you, it reveals itself in a new way and suddenly you’re more receptive to it? Tori is in that category for me. I found The Beekeeper (2005) merely pleasant when I first listened to it (I should add, it came out about four months after my boyfriend died of AIDS and I was in an absolutely awful state, and increasingly alcoholic – I’m not sure what music would have reached me in that condition. I remember only really wanting music that conveyed heartbreak, loss and anguish. I’ve never wallowed quite so badly in my life). But during each subsequent experience with it, I’ve found my ears more open; the sheer prettiness of it, and the poignancy of the melodies, particularly in Marys Of The Sea and Martha’s Foolish Ginger, has captured my heart. So I don’t think there’s such a thing as a “bad” Tori Amos album – merely albums which move into the foreground or recede into the shadows, depending on the complexion of my life at the time of listening.
When In Times Of Dragons was announced last year, the concept sounded a bit outlandish. But this is often the way with Tori Amos’ album concepts. They might sound unconvincing on a press release. Then you hear the album and you’re able to suspend disbelief and enter the world she’s created. I’d call In Times of Dragons a complete success. I wonder what amalgamation of people we’re meant to see in the “Lizard Demon”… it’s clear that he’s not a President, but the money and power behind the President – a Peter Thiel or Elon Musk type. By now, we’ve all heard Stronger Together (I thought it was intriguing that the campaign kicked off with the album’s least representative song) and the brilliant, chilling Shush. All the songs that fall between them in the tracklist (Shush is the opener and Stronger Together the penultimate song) are wonderful reminders of some of Tori’s past triumphs. I hear, for example, traces of Scarlet’s Walk in Provincetown, (indeed, the Dragons concept features a Scarlet-like sojourn across America as the protagonist flees her evil husband). There are electronic details that recall To Venus And Back. The harpsichord, such a memorable component of Boys For Pele, is back.
Tori’s voice has been changing gradually over the years, as one would expect it to. But the change between this album and the last is a more rapid one. The change was becoming more evident on Diving Deep Live, the live album recorded on the tour for Ocean To Ocean – it’s now a fainter, more cracked, breathy instrument. But it doesn’t matter; it’s still a terrific voice in terms of its ability to put the songs over. Any misgivings I had when I began playing the album were over before I reached the end of the first track. People’s voices change and I think leaning into the change, as Tori has done, rather than fighting it, is the way to go. Nothing about the changes in her voice prevents her from singing these songs with vigour, style, emotion, power etc. Of all Tori’s post-millennial albums, this is possibly the one I’ve had the most instantly emotional reaction to. I think the only track I’m more muted about is Fanny Faudrey – it’s in that bouncy, sea-shanty style that Tori has employed before (e.g. the verses in Wednesday, from Scarlet’s Walk). It’s certainly jaunty and charming; it’s perhaps just not quite a striking as its surrounding tracks. But the album probably benefits from the note of merriment introduced by it. Tori’s discography is sprinkled with songs written in quite old-fashioned popular forms, whether that’s the Kurt Weill-meets-Kander-and-Ebb-isms of Leather or the frothy vaudeville of Mr Zebra or Programmable Soda. Some of them are among her best songs while others are less consequential.
So… to reiterate, I think people who aren’t as fond of the softer, more mellow Tori (Ocean To Ocean, The Beekeeper) will enjoy In Times Of Dragons, even though it does have its gentler moments (the ballad Song Of Sorrow recalls 1,000 Oceans) . As others have already noticed, it also marks the return of audible in-breaths on a Tori Amos album, so there’s an immediacy, a sense of the artist being in the room with you. It’s not sterile or excessively titivated. I’ve enjoyed it so much, it’s sent me hurtling back through her discography, not only via the albums themselves, but also the myriad ways their various eras are captured on YouTube. For example, I had never seen this session she did for a French radio station – it’s Beauty of Speed from American Doll Posse. As with the AOL Sessions performance of Almost Rosey, it’s exquisite in a way that the album version can’t quite match. American Doll Posse tends to divide fans. Along with Abnormally Attracted To Sin, it’s considered one of the “identity crisis” albums, heralding the emergence of what some Reddit users call “Fori” (fake Tori – not entirely fair, given that Amos was deliberately experimenting with characters and alter egos), with vocal performances characterised by ever more elongated syllables and strange vowel sounds. But the Doll Posse songwriting was actually incredibly good. When you hear the songs in piano-and-voice arrangements, it becomes even clearer. This Beauty of Speed performance is also unusual because Tori is shot head-on, rather than in profile, and she’s not playing a Bosendorfer. It’s interesting to note that she engages with the camera in a more natural way at this angle – it’s very earnest and affecting and sweet. I really hadn’t fully appreciated how good the song was until I heard it this way. And find, if you have a moment, some of the YouTube live performances from the accompanying tour. In particular, watching Tori’s performance of Cruel during that tour is like being battered by the full force of her talent. The controlled ferocity, the anger, the tension, the catharsis. It’s amazing, heady stuff.
Talking of Reddit, during my research in advance of the interview, I wanted to get a sense of the Tori Amos fandom, since I tend not to participate much in fandom in day to day life. Reddit was one of a handful of places where I went, to lurk and to read old threads. My overwhelming feelings about the Amos fandom are entirely positive. You can just as freely discuss albums you’re not fond of as those you are. It’s like a pre-Stan-culture fandom. Contrast that with contemporary fandoms. It’s become perfectly normal for, say, Taylor Swift fans to swarm/dogpile someone for writing a mildly irreverent review. You are the most unpardonable kind of Judas if you don’t like everything an artist has ever done. I found the Amos fans funny, intelligent, engaging and not above sharing the odd withering verdict here and there (they’re certainly not overly affectionate towards Gold Dust, the 2012 album of back-catalogue songs re-recorded with orchestra – partly because they loved the concept but not the execution, which, if I remember rightly, involved oddly detached, double-tracked vocals). They allow each other to dislike things without it turning into war.
It’s a while since I’ve gushed in this embarrassing sort of way about someone whose music I love. I think it’s wonderful that Tori Amos’ work still delivers such an emotional charge, nearly four decades after she first recorded. I’ll pop back with more thoughts on the album when we get nearer to publication date.
