Introverted But Willing To Discuss Tori Amos

This is a truly momentous occasion as we bring you an exclusive track by track review of Tori’s long awaited new album - her first in 5 years - In Times of Dragons, which imagines another woman we’ll call Tori escaping the clutches of her Peter Thiel-quoting, billionaire “Lizard Demon” husband and going on a literal and metaphysical journey to both reconnect with her estranged daughter and seek help from a circle of Dragon Queens to remove the blade-like scales growing from her spine before ultimately realizing her destiny is indeed to give herself over to the Ancient Order and accept her transformation into a dragon herself.I know. But trust us. It’s really fucking good.Allegory aside, this is one of the most revealing, insightful, and probing records of Tori’s career, each track asking unflinching questions of The Self, like how we did we get ourselves into this nightmarish political quicksand and how we will collectively join forces to pull ourselves out? It also finds Tori confronting her own mortality, her evolving vocal prowess, and what it means to compose in decomposing times. So, snap the throttle, light a candle for St Teresa, and gaze out at the Strawberry Moon while we dive deep into a bold new chapter of The Tori Amos Songbook, In Times of Dragons.

Welcome to Introverted but Willing to Discuss Tori Amos — the podcast for quiet thinkers, deep listeners, and anyone who has ever had a life moment soundtracked by a Tori Amos song.On Episode 3, Kristen, Matt and Joey discuss something that lives somewhere between ritual and road trip: Tori Amos on tour. Because a Tori tour isn’t just a series of concerts — it’s a living, breathing, moving cultural conversation. Songs shift, setlists breathe, old tracks reappear in new emotional colors, and every night becomes its own little universe.Whether you’ve followed Tori across cities and continents, caught a single unforgettable show, or watched the magic unfold from afar, touring is where the songs evolve — and where the stories begin.So in true introvert fashion, we’ll ease into it: the anticipation, the travel, the setlist surprises, the quiet community that forms in theater seats around the world, and what it feels like when those first piano notes hit the room and everything starts to vibrate. Tonight, on the eve of the In Times of Dragons world tour launch, we pre-game our version of the Super Bowl: Tori Amos on tour!

For our Season 3 premiere we are going to zoom in on Tori’s relationship to cinema. I (Matt) have always been inspired by the movies, movies are my earliest memories. They were my first love, my longest relationship and for a long time, my bread and butter. On our season 2 episode featuring JPS JV asked him how he would describe Tori’s music. We see Tori as a great auteur, someone who creates worlds that are cinematic and immersive. In that respect, she is like the Martin Scorsese of singer-songwriters: a director who can handle any genre thrown at him, but still retains a certain quality that is unmistakably his and his alone. To be this kind of artist, at minimum, you have to at least know yourself inside and out and Tori proved with Little Earthquakes that she could articulate everything that was inside of her mind, her heart, her bones. She did this so early in life that she allowed herself the creative freedoms to blend those worlds for the rest of her career, and explore narrative and character in a way very few singer-songwriters have. She became a sonic character actress sure, because she played all of the roles in her songs herself, but, in our view, she truly became a sonic auteur. The listener can see these stories visually as they experience the music sonically. Today we are cataloguing and contextualizing Tori Amos many dalliances with cinema, so no please join us as we launch Season THRAY.

There’s not just one Tori Amos.There’s the mystical Tori. The one who whispers and stirs your soul with a single, dramatically drawn breathy sigh. Ethereal and enchanted. Imagine her as a church choir girl sun, faerie moon and a mermaid rising if you’re into astrology. Then there’s the sensual Tori. The one who moves like honey, undulating on the piano bench, eyes half-closed, turning her microphone into a… lover. Desire and divinity inhabit the same body, and she always finishes on top. ;) And then there’s the Tori who bares her teeth, growls, screams, and slams the keys. You have seen this tori in various forms. She’s the one who famously performed a song about her own assault while gripping a knife on stage.This Halloween, as the veil between worlds grows thin, we’re calling on that Tori– the one who kicked out the lady in the white shirt (does she fucking mind?). Because Scary Tori isn’t a costume. She’s a force of nature- part witch, part warrior- and she’s on a mission. This Tori channels something ancient through her piano and what she finds might even surprise her at times.So today, in honor of the season of shadows, we’re talking about Scary Tori: the power that makes you flinch… and then lean closer.

In this episode, we open the mailbag and dive into your burning questions. Will there be a 2026 tour? Is a new album on the horizon? We share our takes, speculate wildly, and cover the topics you most wanted to hear about.

In this episode, we ponder what it means for a Tori Amos song to be “underrated.” Is “underrated” in this context even something definable? Or is it ultimately subjective and personal to the individual listener? Is a song underrated because Tori rarely or never performs it? Or is it a song that’s been played so many times that we’ve taken it for granted and can no longer hear the genius and the grit that went into its creation? Or perhaps it lives on a latter-day Tori record that’s less celebrated, less heard by the general public? In the spirit of our wildly successful – and a touch controversial – Best of Tori Amos episode, we bring to you The 20 Most Underrated Tori Songs. We repeated our very scientific method of each crafting individual lists of what we believe to be Tori’s most underrated tracks – from proper albums only; no bsides, no soundtracks, no covers, no seasonal music - tallying each song’s respective points and then ranking the ranking them in ascending order. The result is a playlist that spans many - but not all - of Tori’s records, chock full of gags, goops, gogs, and go-figures. Given how underrated we likely all agree Tori is in the broader history of contemporary music, this very episode may be the definition of a fool’s errand. Regardless, in the spirit of the woman we call Tori once calling herself an “ant fucker,” we are Introverted but willing to discuss Tori Amos’ most underrated songs.Playlists:20 Most Underrated Songs JVKKMM

Greetings to the cowboys, the snakes, and the kin among us. Tonight we have a real southern tale to tell. Somewhere out past the cat’s whiskers and royal palm, where the air hangs heavy with history, there’s a sound—low, humming, ancient. Maybe it’s a siren calling from a forgotten Southern shore, or the echo of Datura blooming under an October moon. Or maybe—just maybe—it’s the land calling back.Tonight, we’re following that sound through Tori Amos’ most Southern-infused songs—the ones laced with heat, history, and a little bit of blood memory.Now, let’s put our alligator boots in the dirt. Yes, Tori was born in North Carolina, but she grew up in Maryland—Southern enough if you’re feeling generous, but let’s be honest, it’s not exactly Dixie. Still, this lizard woman knows the South. The places where time bends a little differently. Her Cherokee blood runs deep, and her family’s history is carved into the land like a story waiting to be sung. And yes, the song lines, they do indeed sing.Whether she’s summoning the turquoise serpents, calling out to the Merman in a rising tide, we’re mapping out a Tori playlist where the South isn’t just a place—it’s a feeling. And if we get lost along the way, well… we’ll just drive all night until we find our way back.So let’s go to her Southern land of gold. Just go. Tonight we are Introverted but willing to mess with a southern girl.Playlists:JVKKMM

Tori Amos’ expansive body of work over the past 30-plus years has covered most musical terrain. From confessional outpourings of emotion, to thunderously-programmed electronic beats, blips and whirrs, to stinging guitar-driven diatribes directed at the religious Right, Tori has become known as both an architect and an adventurer, as well as a consummate player. She has transcended the “singer-songwriter” or “girl with a piano” labels once assigned to her to become one of the most important figures in contemporary popular music. With hundreds of beloved, canonical songs under her belt, it would be a fool’s errand to try and discern what Tori’s 20 best songs of all time are, right? Well, friends, we are just crazy enough to try and grab that bull by the horns: On this episode, Kristen, Matt and Joey spend an enchanted evening testing their close knit friendship by voting with weighted, secret ballots that were cast to answer an impossible, eternal question: what are Tori Amos’ 20 BEST songs, ranked? We’re trying out a several new things on this episode, starting with the concept: we dont usually do ranking here, we rearrange or reimagine our playlists, but this time we dare to count down to the greatest Tori Amos track of all-time. The results are a wild ride. We also typically make three separate playlists for each episode, but tonight we have focused our dark powers to vote on and create one collaborative playlist that we voted on anonymously. Kristen and Matt react to the list reveal in real time, making for a raucous discussion about what exactly constitutes “the best of Tori Amos”. So please join us for a conversation that somehow miraculously doesn’t go off the rails and let us know in the comments what you think of our lil list…and also share your own! Remember, this is “best of” and not “favorite”. Good luck. 🙃Group playlist available on Spotify!

We have a new name! Messing with the Master: Tori Amos is now Introverted But Willing To Discuss Tori Amos! Join us to talk about our favorite redhead 👩🏻‍🦰

In terms of narrative, composition and sheer scope as a record, Boys for Pele is one of the most audacious “pop” records to come out of the 1990s. Make no mistake: despite its twisty narrative, mysteriously confrontational lyrics and non-traditional take on song structure, Pele was a considerable mainstream success, selling more than 2 million copies worldwide and going platinum in the United States. Part harrowing journey into darkness and fury, part coming to terms with the aftermath of a shattered psyche, Boys for Pele might actually be the anti-pop record. Ironically, Tori’s biggest-selling single off the record (her biggest-selling single of all time), was a club mix of the Southern Gothic tale of madness and revenge “Professional Widow” that focuses on the lyric “it’s gotta be big.” Those who entered into this disorienting, often sinister world expecting a four on the floor rave were instead greeted by a smoky, deeply-complex rumination on one woman’s singular version of The Blues. The album finds Tori in a fugue descending into a hallucinatory abyss of anger, despair and confusion; the cathartic kind that evokes the wrenching neurotic pain of a genteel Blanche Dubois cracking in A Streetcar Named Desire. Its roots are distinctly rooted in the deeply soulful, deeply-odd South that might have been written about by Flannery O’Connor or filmed by D.W. Griffith, which is reflected in the choices made for the album’s artwork: Tori appears as the guardian of ghostly, forgotten children much like Lillian Gish does in the 1955 film The Night of the Hunter. All of these works are both branded with the red-hot iron of righteous Christianity and haunted by the foul-smelling sulfuric specter of the Devil himself. It is that unholy and unsettling bilocation and brilliant intertextuality that marks a true literary work of genius, artistic masterpiece, or any consummate objet d’art, all of which are applicable lenses through which to view an intimate, intricate, and positively harrowing work such as Boys for Pele. Categorization is futile, but the ways in which Pele can be read are staggering. Playlists: KK MM JV

With Strange Little Girls, Tori Amos approached the covers album as concept album, offering reinterpretations of 12 diverse male-authored tracks from the perspectives of an assortment of female characters. The project was inspired originally by by the homophobic and misogynistic messages which Amos believed to be prevalent in popular song at the beginning of the 21st century. “People were talking to me about how popular music was getting more violent,” she recalled in Piece by Piece. “Male songwriters were saying these really malicious things … and I really felt … that a generalized image of the antiwoman, antigay heterosexual man had hijacked Western male heterosexuality and brought it to the mediocrity of the moment.” The innovation of Strange Little Girls is to extend this debate into the realm of rock, and to recognise mainstream music as one of the primary cultural spheres in which gender roles get played out and patriarchal ideology disseminated. Supplemented by superb Cindy Sherman-inspired photography, the album is a rewarding and subversive work that boldly challenges the listener to reassess their relationship not only to each of these songs, but also to the wider cultural attitudes that they embody and endorse. “I wanted to complement the significance and scope of what she was doing. I felt like we were really in tune together, with what we were searching for,” recalled Adrian Belew, the project’s guitarist. “It was very comfortable working with her. I was surprised at the whole of the record [when I first heard it]. The songs I was unfamiliar with, in the context of what I had played, really changed the way I saw her as a producer and what she had envisioned. I frequently sign Strange Little Girls CDs, and the evidence is there that this record is important to people and they make the association between me and Tori and my contribution to the record. And then I realize they were probably turned onto me by Tori, and that’s an extraordinary thing for a musician to know. It is reflective of the community she builds in her work.” Playlists JV KK MM Songs of Tori Amos – Season 6 selections referenced in the episode New Age KK is team FOX JV and MM are team FUCKS. 97 Bonnie and Clyde

Content warning: this episode discusses pregnancy and child loss. Please take care while listening. On this week's episode, we book a round trip ticket To Venus and Back. Tori's surprisingly prompt follow -up to 1998's From the Choirgirl Hotel. After an epic world tour, Tori had implied that she'd be taking a break from recording for a while and planned to release a live album with a few new bonus tracks. As Tori's want to do, those bonus tracks developed into a full -blown 11 -track album with a bonus live disc that was released on September 21st, 1999, my 17th birthday. Thank you very much. To Venus and Back is deeply beloved by fans and for good reason. It shows Tori and her band, Matt Chamberlain on drums, Jon Evans on bass, and Steve Caton on guitars at the height of their ensemble powers, and Tori at her most sonically experimental. As Tori herself once instructed, if it's too loud, turn it up. And that's precisely what she does on To Venus and Back. The songs feel like an organic extension of the Choirgirl sound, but to say they sounded all similar to one another would be listener malpractice. Venus occupies a sonic space that is truly unlike anything Tori has done up to that point or has done since. The mixing, the engineering, the drum looping, the vocal distortions, the manipulation of the Bosendorfer, the introduction of new and strange synthesizer samples. Every singular moment is its own dynamic piece of a dark, twisty, truly otherworldly puzzle that Tori has constructed with this record. It's cliche to say it was ahead of its time in 1999, but given how fresh and bold and immersive it sounds in the year of Our Lord 2024, no one would argue that Tori truly wrote, performed, and produced a collection of songs that pushed not only her own boundaries, but the boundaries of her listeners. Perhaps Tori summed it up best herself in the lyric from Spring Haze when she instructs us that quote, the only way out is to go so far in. So join us as we break the terror of the urban spell. JV playlist KK playlist MM playlist

Content warning: this episode briefly discusses DV and suicide. Please take care while listening. “So what if you find you like to tango alone?" Tori Amos asks in the final moments of “Birthday Baby," the closing track of her 15th solo album Ocean to Ocean, released on October 21, 2021. An ode to the unexpected ways we collectively learned to both mourn and celebrate during the years-long isolation of the COVID-19 crisis, the song vacillates between a rousing eleven o'clock musical number and something a David Lynch character might sob inconsolably to while draped over a diner jukebox. This juxtaposition is the essence of Tori, who has been masterfully weaving the familiar, strange, tender, and unsettling for over 30 years. What immediately distinguished Ocean to Ocean upon release from Amos’ previous records, though, was its timeliness, an album written and recorded during the most hopeless heights of a global pandemic, released into a world that had barely begun to scratch the surface of its shared trauma. Never one to shy away from documenting her own emotional turbulence, Tori allowed Ocean to Ocean to wear its melancholy on its sleeve. It’s a record inspired and consumed by loss – loss of connection to others, loss of the self, loss of Tori's beloved mother Mary – and the process of trying to piece together both who we were before the storm and who we might become on the day after. The result is a tight, cohesive collection of songs that expertly articulates and somehow finds meaning in the deepest recesses of despair. Ocean to Ocean is ultimately both a technical triumph -- Tori recorded virtually from her home studio in Cornwall, England with longtime collaborators Matt Chamberlain, Jon Evans, and John Philip Shenale (quite literally oceans apart) -- and a triumph of the spirit, Tori finding the artistic and emotional strength to recontextualize a year of losses into a record of rebirth. So, stay with Joey, Kristen, and Matt as they unravel the gorgeous, generous fishing net that is Ocean to Ocean. "Get Out of that Pain," a conversation between Joey and Tori for BOMB magazine: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2020/05/06/tori-amos-resistance Tiny Desk Concert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SufUZu4h_m8 JV playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7zhxFp9ESB5WH9YuWY4Rpe?si=bedb114b0215415e KK playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2rFV8OAbjkRUsAx1sXBrFc?si=2b8a0878dcf6471c MM playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3Cf1JxCjkBhExAKP5ug4IC?si=ae970433a23e4377