Tori Amos is a force. In addition to anticipating the release of her eighteenth studio album In Times of Dragons due this May, fans can celebrate the 25th anniversary edition of Strange Little Girls.
The album is just as innovative today as it was in the early aughts and has been rereleased with four bonus tracks. In 2001, Amos endeavored to get out of her label contract and thus Strange Little Girls was born: A collection of twelve cover songs, each one originally sung by men and reinterpreted with Amos’s unique creative flair.
Amos is known for her own obscure and eccentric lyrics as it’s one of many fields she flourishes in. When left with the words of another, she still finds ways to completely turn meaning on its head.
Perhaps most striking is her chilling rendition of “‘97 Bonnie and Clyde” by Eminem. The song bears similarities to the original in words and virtually nothing else. Amos turns the rap into a spoken word piece backed by anxiety-inducing piano. The lyrics, which read as excessive and violent at original publication in 1999 on The Slim Shady LP, are emphasized through Amos’s speech patterns. In Eminem’s version, the song follows a husband who has killed his wife and made his daughter an accomplice. The lyrics are genuinely haunting yet that atmosphere gets forgotten by his flow.
However, when Amos snaps: “Sit back in your chair honey, quit tryin’ to climb out,” listeners can physically see the way the smile would drop, how the eyes would narrow. The annoyance is perfectly communicated in her voice — the exasperation, the depravity, all of it comes across in mere speech.
Her voice maintains an almost flirtatious lilt; as she counts down to three, preparing the narrator’s kid to partake in the drowning of their own mother, things sound simply unnatural. Juxtaposing the assumed sexiness of the whisper with such visceral and graphic language while the piano forewarns danger makes for a truly one of a kind listening experience.
Amos doesn’t intend to sexualize the violent subject matter, rather her voice serves to remind and underscore the depravity of the original lyrics. Things like this shouldn’t be danced to, shouldn’t be sexualized — or, they can, but then they’re up for interpretation.
In Amos’ telling, the nameless victim of the original song recounts what she overhears from her family as she’s bleeding out. Amos confronts how the reality of domestic violence is glorified and justified in the rap. In September 2001, she told Next magazine of the song, “When she spoke to me — the woman dying in the back of the car — she took me by the hand and said, ‘You need to hear how I heard it.”
Amos gave the woman a voice and that is vital. The woman is dying and rendered powerless in Eminem’s version, until Amos commits and honors her experience within a song that becomes wholly her own. It begs listeners to not become desensitized when terrible words are sung rather than spoken. It reminds us songs like this aren’t always meant for the club, are instead like pieces of literature to be critically interpreted and considered in our wider cultural landscape.
The only time Amos sings, “Just the two of us” over and over, her voice cascades over the inherent awfulness of the subject matter and it elevates things further. The song is disturbing and doesn’t feel satisfying until its sharp end, after nearly six minutes. It sounds like a door slamming shut.
Really, what it sounds like is that Amos made history 25 years ago, and it remains revolutionary today. The conversations to be had on misogyny and violence in rap lyrics is exacerbated by Amos’ stark interpretation. An extended spoken word piece on any commercially released album remains novel, especially one asking listeners to truly think about music and its function beyond entertainment.
As a current college student, Tori Amos holds a special place in my heart. It took me eight years from initially feeling uncomfortable and unimpressed by her lyrics (that feels blasphemous to type) to truly love and connect with her work. There will never be another Tori Amos, and there doesn’t need to be. She’s still just as prolific as ever, and the 25th edition of Strange Little Girls is a welcomed reminder of her endless talents.
