At this year's Women In Music Awards, we celebrated the achievements of 13 game-changing executives and artists as the industry came together to honour their work. Music Week has spoken to all 13 winners to tell their stories.
Words: Anna Fielding
“I think music is true magic,” says Tori Amos. “It’s true magic and not illusion, it’s conjuring things out of the ether and it takes people to places where they might not want to go, but have to in order to free themselves of something that was hurtful.”
The winner of the Inspirational Artist trophy at the Music Week Women In Music Awards 2024 has one more thing to offer on the value of her craft.
“Music can take you across the galaxy without leaving your chair,” she says. “It’s precious.”
The same word can be applied to the 61-year-old, North Carolina-born artist, who shot to fame with her 1992 debut album Little Earthquakes, which has 182,483 sales, according to the Official Charts Company.
Now signed to Decca in the UK, Amos has recorded 16 studio albums to date, the most recent being 2021’s Ocean To Ocean. She has sold more than 12 million albums worldwide and was the first major label act to make a single available for download (Bliss, from 1999 album To Venus And Back), while her 1996 hit Professional Widow was a Top 40 fixture.
A renowned activist, Amos was also the first public voice for RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network), the largest anti-sexual assault organisation in America.
Here, Music Week meets Amos to discuss her long and storied career, the changing face of the music industry, representation and the art of songwriting…
Tori Amos with Natasha Khan of Bat For Lashes, who presented her with the Inspirational Artist trophy
How do you feel about being named Inspirational Artist by the Women In Music Awards?
“It’s a huge honour to be acknowledged with so many other women who are trying to do their best. We all try to do our best and to have that recognised does give me quite a lift. It’s special to have these moments with other women who really care about what they are doing. The trick is to show up and be present in the minute, in every moment. Being present in the moment is how I find I achieve things with a team, and with a sense of collaboration and listening. I think that’s the case for most people who do well in their career or in their art, because I’ve never considered being an artist a job. To be able to create and have the opportunity to create, that’s a privilege.”
You live partly in the UK and you’re signed to Decca. What’s been your experience of the UK music industry?
“I’ve been in and out of the UK since 1991. We split our time these days. But when I’m working on projects I’m fortunate enough to have a recording studio here, so it means a lot of the day-to-day people I work with are British. My husband is British, and my tour manager who is now my manager. I’ve been on Decca for many years now and I have a good creative relationship with them. It doesn’t feel hierarchical in the way it can feel for an artist talking to the bigwigs. It doesn’t feel business-based as it can on some labels, especially in the States. I can have creative conversations with the Decca team.”
Decca has two co-presidents in Tom Lewis and Laura Monks. Have you noticed that the make-up of record labels has changed during your career?
“Certainly in terms of diversity, there are more women now. When I released Little Earthquakes I was fortunate enough that my product manager, head of marketing and head of press were all women. They were frontline for me in England - I was signed in the States, but Doug Morris thought the Brits would get me more than the Americans and after the success in the UK it flew over to the States.”
If you give up, if you capitulate and walk away, then the probability is that it won’t happen again and you need to make peace with that
Tori Amos
You’re very committed to playing live. What’s the landscape like for touring right now?
“I am very concerned. We all know its costs to tour and I am lucky enough to be my own backer and have a good team around me. It takes more than talent to have a 30-year career, it takes surrounding yourself with people who know what they are doing or you can have some terrible experiences and get ripped off. So there are acts out there that don’t have the right advice and the right guidance. It’s tough to tour.”
You’ve always been rated on your musicianship as well as your general performance. How long has it taken you to master skills such as playing two pianos at once?
“I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t play. I hope it doesn’t sound weird, I’m just giving you the facts. I was two-and-a-half [when I started], according to my mother. I could always play with both hands and I could hear things and play them back. I wasn’t taught to play. I was at the conservatory at five, at the Peabody, on a full scholarship, and that’s where I was taught to read music. Unfortunately, when you go from playing the Beatles catalogue or the score of a show tune from Oklahoma or whatever to then playing a tune like Hot Cross Buns - because I had to learn how to read music - it’s very demoralising to go from complex and beautiful music to such a soulless nursery rhyme. Eventually I got to Bach and Mozart and the work they had created for beginner pianists to read and I started to fall in love with music again. But there was a period of almost two years where the thing I loved doing had become a torment and a punishment.
“Anyway, I was on track to become a concert pianist, that was the goal my dad had in mind for me. I turned pro at 13, then I was playing piano in a gay bar and then finally hotel lobbies and stuff. So I had to build a repertoire of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of songs, and it was during these years of performing where I began to realise what was working and what wasn't working. By the early ’90s it started to make sense to me to have more than one piano, to have synths, to have things that made other sounds that I could combine together. The harpsichord was a big part of it. I worked pretty extensively on building core muscles and leg muscles, because I play from my core, I don’t just play from my arms.”
The impact made by Little Earthquakes continues to resound to this day. Why do you think it connected in the way it did?
“The failure of [previous band] Y Kant Tori Read… It was a pebble in a small pond to a lot of people, but my whole world was shattered. I’d stopped. I didn’t even have a piano in my little apartment any more. One day I went over to a friend’s house and she had an old upright. I played her piano and she was just sitting there and then she said to me, ‘There’s no question in my mind that this is what you should be doing, not chasing what you say is successful on the radio or MTV.’ But I had been a failure and in LA, the worst thing you could catch was failure. It was seen as a contagion and nobody wanted to be near it. I had to peel my skin off, burn the Y Kant Tori Read-era bustier. And I started playing and playing to get my chops back up. I went back to the piano bar to support myself and over the next four years of writing I made a deal with myself. I thought, ‘I'm never going to write music that I can't stand by, and I'm not going to chase what's on the radio, and if that means I have to stay In the piano bar for the rest of my life, at least, I'll wake up with my self respect.’”
You wrote Me And A Gun about your own experience of rape, and were the first spokesperson for RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network), America’s largest anti-sexual assault organisation. How do you reflect on your role in bringing the topic to the attention of people in the music industry and beyond?
“Well, I think the sad part of this conversation is that we need rape crisis centres. During the pandemic, the calls increased exponentially. All of the the protectors, who would usually see the signs particularly in underage children, weren't there to report or guide or be there because schools, sports [centres] and things were closed. So the grown-ups who could raise a hand and say, ‘Something isn't right here,’ or the child could confide in them, weren't there. People were trapped in their own homes. Not everyone's home is a place of safety.
“When I wrote Me And A Gun, I felt it was groundbreaking. I remember somebody at the record label not wanting me to put it out. And it was a man. They said, ‘When I get to this song, I just want to turn the whole thing off. It makes me so uncomfortable.’ And I said, ‘It's supposed to make you very uncomfortable. This is something that happens to women all the time, and it has to be talked about.’ Playing it live, being committed to doing it a capella at shows... I did it every show in ’92 and in ’94 I did it a lot. One night, a young woman fainted while I was doing it, and they took her to the side of stage. I spoke to her and she said, ‘Please take me with you, because when I get home tonight my stepfather will rape me like he did last night and the night before.’ I was going to take her with me. She was 16 I think and legal got on the phone with me and explained to me that I was crossing a state line and that I'd be arrested for kidnapping. And so that's when we reached out to the amazing women at Atlantic Records, they got me in touch with Scott [Berkowitz], who founded RAINN, and I was the first official spokesperson for them. I've never seen that young woman again. I have no idea what happened, but she was the driving force of wanting to be a part of connecting people with people who could pick up the phone and help guide them through.”
Tori Amos on stage
Your 2001 album Strange Little Girls took songs written by men and reinterpreted them from a female perspective. How do you reflect on it now?
“It was a discovery, an investigation. I was asking everybody what songs by men inspired them. I wanted to develop the anima of the songs themselves. When I do a cover, I go to the song and ask permission and these were the ones that gave me permission. Then for the images I worked with Karen Binns, the stylist I still work with today, and the late, great [make-up artist] Kevyn Aucoin and told them who these women-creatures were. In retrospect I am as proud of it as I am anything I penned myself.”
You were also the first artist to offer a single for download. If you could go back in time, would you do the same again?
“Isn’t that funny? It’s amusing to me because everybody who knows me knows I am not technical. This goes back to having a good team around you, surrounding yourself with people who have forethought and vision.”
How do you feel about streaming now?
“Streaming is there. It’s our reality, isn’t it? And if you don’t adapt you’ll get lost. I am happy there’s a renewed interest in vinyl. I have a live double vinyl coming out soon and I’m excited about that. We're putting a lot of things out now on vinyl, and I think it's something we should be excited about, that the public seems to be interested in. No, it's not on the numbers we're talking about from the ’70s or the ’80s with CDs. But it shows that people are interested in receiving music in different ways.”
You once told Music Week you found songwriting to be like torture, sometimes. Can you expand on that?
“I think every writer has experienced this at least once. Sometimes it really can be, ‘How am I going to climb this mountain?’ And then somehow the muses find me. Although sometimes I'm looking metaphorically at my watch and going, ‘Tick tock. Where are you?’ I can go write a song every day of my life. But is it really something that I want to share with anybody or that I feel is worthy? No. I'm in awe of songwriters who get up every day at a certain time and go to their back shed, or whatever they call it, and they just write. They write and throw things at the wall, and they come back and do it again the next day. That process doesn’t work for me. I have to take pilgrimages or be reading. Intake. Art books. Listening to people in a coffee shop. I’ve found the skill I need most as a musician, putting aside the chops or the technical ability, is listening.”
Winning an award like this can often be a point to pause and reflect. Looking back over your career, is there anything you would have done differently?
“Oh, so many things. The main one is how I dealt with some situations with the bigwigs, particularly in the ’90s. At that time there were some dark shenanigans that went on. I should have been smart, not right.”
What’s your advice for the women of tomorrow?
“If you give up, if you capitulate and walk away, then the probability is that it won’t happen again and you need to make peace with that. Music is one thing. The music business is not for everybody. Can we do better for the women of tomorrow? Is there an outreach we can have? There’s not an HR for artists, but I want to encourage the women of tomorrow. Every generation has its challenges. Now people aren’t relying solely on radio, they can speak directly to the audience… I do know that we need music and will continue. It’s part of the human condition. If you’re called, don’t let anyone or anything stop you.”
Click here for more from Women In Music 2024.
