small things.: THANK YOU HUSBAND: A Story About How Sex Apparently Ruins Everything If You Are A Lady
A little ways back, I spent some time researching Tori Amos. As a result, I have a vast amount of Tori-Amos-related opinion floating around in my head, STILL, which I must communicate with you.
1) It occurs to me that “Cornflake Girl,” much like “Gimme Shelter,” owes a significant…
This answers a lot of questions I’ve had about the baffling series of Tori’s releases from 1998 on.
Truth: I love Tori, I will always love Tori, but her post-Scarlet’s Walk albums have had a lot of little spiderweb cracks that add up. (And I may be justifying Scarlet’s Walk just because that tour was the only time I’ve seen Tori in concert.) I agree that her music isn’t the same and doesn’t have the same edge.
That being said, I think this blog post here is kind of not sure what it’s bitching about and it’s a little hypocritical. Tori’s shit without Steve Caton, but it’s not okay for a man to guide a woman’s career? And in order to make good music, she needs to have a fascination with death and destruction? In order to create art, she has to be miserable? And the person she loves most in the world can’t state a concern he has about her preoccupation with painful things (and rightfully so), and that can’t clarify things for her? If it was her best female friend, would that paragraph even have made it into the post?
I’m not justifying it. I do think that Mark Hawley has had a detrimental effect on her music, but I think it’s because he’s not a great guitar player (which Steve Caton is— Tori and Caton could fucking jam) and I think they’re stuck in their own little cocoon without enough input from an impartial party. I don’t think it has to approach the point of the feminist war cry. (And maybe I’m not a proper feminist for thinking this.) Tori Amos is no less of a woman/feminist/advocate because she has respect for her partner (business OR romantic) and his opinion. She’s no less a person because she married and became a mother and it chilled her the fuck out.
Look, some people reach a point. Angry, injured people can find a softness and solace, and their art changes because of it. You find your answers, you grow, you move on. Tori Amos is still a brilliant pianist and a wonderful musician, but the place that she writes songs from is different. She’s not the same musician that she was ten years ago, and I think that not making room for an artist to grow and develop is a selfish, injurious attitude. I think telling Tori Amos (or any other female artist) who they ought to be or what they ought to do is just as harmful as Mark Hawley or any other man doing it.
Hear Hear! So much. You put into words all of my instincts about this.
