Musicheads Essential Artist: Tori Amos
March 16, 2020
March is Women's History Month. To celebrate, each weekday this month we'll be spotlighting a different artist with special coverage on air and online. For Monday, March 16, we're shining a light on Tori Amos.
Tori Amos is a pioneering singer-songwriter, an innovative and classically-trained pianist, and an advocate for survivors of abuse.
Born Myra Ellen Amos, Tori spent most of her childhood in Baltimore, Maryland, and had developed into a child prodigy by the age of two. Remarkably, she was able to play melodies by ear at two and began writing her own songs at three. By five she had become the youngest person ever to have been admitted into the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
Tori had her first brush with a major label when her synth-pop band Y Kant Tori Read was picked up by Atlantic Records in 1988. But it wasn't until she released her solo debut, Little Earthquakes, on Atlantic in 1992 that she experienced her first artistic and commercial breakthrough.
The album included striking, confessional songs like "Silent All These Years," which became a hit on MTV and a powerful anthem for survivors of sexual assault. Just two years later in 1994, Tori released another smash, Under the Pink, and her song "God" shot to the top of the alternative charts.
Tori immediately stood out from other popular artists at the time for her original sound, her authenticity, and her unapologetic take on navigating a male-dominated world. By the mid '90s, the pop music pendulum had swung toward artists who were writing their own songs and singing about their own experiences, and Tori was there leading a new wave of alternative singer-songwriters.