Tori Amos: Raisin Girl

Tori Amos is my most favourite musician (my pen name 維蜜 alludes to her song “Honey”, the popular b-side track which didn’t make it into her Under the Pink album, giving it cult status) and one of the major reasons is her chameleon-like style.

I still remember how stunned I was when I first saw Amos – she was on the Under the Pink album cover looking like an angel wearing a simple white dress that reflects the minimalist mood of the 90s. After listening to the album I realized that her songs are anything but minimalist – they are maximalist, epic on ideas. Think of each of Amos’ song as an interesting individual – she has conversations with her compositions – or like she said, “I have so many different personalities in me”. Nothing is what it seems is a mantra that applies to Amos’ music and fashion styles – both demand un-sloppy observers to scratch beneath the surface, dig a little deeper. Tori Amos is not for the unquestioning.

Like her decidedly genre-defying music, Amos loves experimenting with style reinventions. With the exception of dressing as a punk in her Y Kant Tori Read years (she was in the synth pop band Y Kant Tori Read before going solo), she has successfully built her wardrobe around the many facets of her public persona, be it determined rebel, fierce redhead, rock goddess, nurturing mother or piano genius.

For her concept album Strange Little Girls (she reinterpreted from a female point of view songs originally sung by male musicians such as “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode and “Time” by Tom Waits) she dressed up as a wild bunch of personalities. Her friend fantasy author Neil Gaiman wrote short stories about each strange little girl (his book Fragile Things contains the full versions) and the late Kevyn Aucoin did Amos’ makeup. Amos reconfirmed herself as the Cindy Sherman of the music world then and there.

13 years have passed since I first came across Tori Amos and I am still mesmerized by all of her looks (love is blind : p) minus Y Kant Tori Read but her outfit for Viktor & Rolf’s Fall 2005 Ready-to-Wear fashion show in which she performed her 15-minute (talk about epic on ideas) composition based on the Song of Solomon is heart-stoppingly great. She looked better than any of the models of the show, even those with lovely pillows on their head. (Image: Reuters)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzW3pULj18s