Abnormally Attracted to Sin is the tenth studio album by singer-songwriter Tori Amos. It was released in the UK on 18 May 2009 and in the US on 19 May 2009 as a digital download, standard CD, and deluxe limited edition CD/DVD. It debuted on Billboard 200s "top ten" list, at #9, making it the artist's seventh album to do so. It is also the artist's first release under her deal with Universal Republic Records, following the end of her contract with Epic Records, and can be cited as the first non-conceptualized and self-proclaimed "personal album" by the singer-songwriter in over 10 years.

Artwork

Photography

Welcometoengland.jpgthumbCover art of "Welcome to England"

For the album's photographic component, Amos enlisted fashion photographer Karen Collins. "I love the way shoots women," Amos stated about the photographer's work. "It's not vulgar or demeaning, but I find it just sexy. They look empowered to me, and I like her style." The setting for the album's artwork is a cream-colored hotel room, with various photos of Amos depicting different ideas of sensuality through images such as voyeurism and sadomasochism, both of which tie into the ideas of power explored throughout the album.

The Visualettes

From its beginning stages, Abnormally Attracted to Sin was intended to be an audio-visual project including an abundance of synchronizing visuals, and filming the visualettes was a significant catalyst for the development of the album.

Christian Lamb, who has worked with the likes of Madonna, Incubus, and Ozzy Osbourne, was initially hired by Amos to shoot footage of her 2007 world tour for an intended live/concert DVD. However, after disagreements with Epic Records - the details of which have remained vague in the media, which has only cited "creative and financial differences" - Amos left the label and joined Universal Music Group, temporarily stalling the completion and release of the DVD.

Along with the creative spurt in song-writing that she was met by during her world tour and while in California the following year, Amos also became increasingly inspired by all of the footage Lamb had shot of her concerts, and which he had already begun to organize and edit. Amos has stated that viewing the footage inspired certain songs, while certain songs inspired the shaping of some of the footage into several of the final vignettes.

As a result of this sudden bit of inspiration, Amos requested that Lamb shoot more footage, this time of her dressed up in various costumes, haute couture fashion, settings and circumstances. The live/concert DVD had suddenly morphed into a complementary "film" that would accompany her next album.

The footage was shot in HD and Super 8 and, due to financial limitations, was edited by a series of Lamb's "assistants" causing noted criticism of the films' unfocused and, at times, disparate narratives.

Seemingly inspired more by her love of fashion, canvas art and paintings rather than by silent films, The Road Chronicles is composed of sixteen vignettes in which Amos can be found “playing” herself, along with the archetypal "dolls” from her previous effort, in dream-sequences infused with myriad metaphors, symbols, images, locations and haute couture fashion-pieces that are meant to evoke and open up the themes and experiences tackled on each of the corresponding 16 songs.

Amos, herself, has stated, "I began to really think about the idea of a story being told through the visuals and yet the song itself giving us all the information – that’s our dialogue. I didn’t want any lip-syncing."

About the look of the visualettes, Amos has said: "We wanted to do pretty much 8mm and more of a late ‘60’s, indie kind of feeling and that began the visualette world."

In each of the “small films”, as Amos also refers to them, the artist can be found in a series of scenarios – wandering along the shady streets of a random red-light district; stalking herself in a cemetery; in the throes of a psychic’s reading and a manic ceremonial bath; cruising men late into the night in a shady bar; smoking and "cleansing" herself with ceremonial tobacco smoke – that are meant to evoke some issue or experience from life she is grappling with.

Along with portraying herself, Amos can be seen portraying “the dolls” from 2007's American Doll Posse, in an apparent attempt at deconstruncting that album's concept.

In these visualettes, all of the dolls seem to be “acting out” various feelings, experiences and fantasies Amos grapples with on the album. The final visualette of the DVD is for the song Abnormally Attracted to Sin, and has Amos entering a church and kneeling before an altar, seemingly coming to terms with her own spirituality and "a natural kind of faith", as the artist sings on the aforementioned closing-track.

Chapter/Visualette index (DVD)

The tracklisting that forms the backbone to The Road Chronicles differs greatly from the one comprising the standard edition of the album. Amos has stated that this was a purposeful decision on her part, noting, "I think the visualettes connect as well. The order is different though, which was very intentional. The order of the visual side of things is different than if you're just putting the sonic thing on headphones and taking a walk. I felt like you had to experience it very, very differently."

#"That Guy"

#"Welcome to England"

#"Strong Black Vine"

#"Ophelia"

#"Fast Horse"

#"Fire to Your Plain

#"Curtain Call"

#"Not Dying Today"

#"Maybe California"

#"Give"

#"Police Me"

#"Starling"

#"500 Miles"

#"Flavor"

#"Lady in Blue"

#"Abnormally Attracted to Sin"

Reception

The album received modest to genuinely positive praise from critics, with most negative reviews aimed at the album's extensive running time rather than its musical content.

" studio release finds her in full command of her expanded arsenal, creating an overall sound that's as psychedelic as it is classic," wrote Billboard Magazine, adding, "the sounds coupled with lyrical content — metaphors rendered through literary heroines, religious imagery, exotic food, cities as characters, triple entendres — make for a singular tapestry that, as the artist matures, requires less and less prior knowledge of her catalog to enjoy." Slant Magazine gave the album a mixed, yet mostly positive review, exclaiming unapologetically, "It's a genuine relief that lacks the cumbersome structural conceit of Scarlet's Walk or the dissociative identity disorder of American Doll Posse. Rather than suffocating her songs under a pretentious broad construct, here Amos allows them to stand on their own merits and, in turn, demonstrates the superior craft upon which she first made her name." Slug Magazine called it "one of 2009’s finest albums," while the Los Angeles Times praised the album's "canny balance between Victorian-inspired decadence, mythical pathos and arch camp." Entertainment Weekly magazine noted, "Sometimes her brains get a little too big for her Bible. But when she's banging on her piano over layers of lush electronics, she's got the rapture part down."

Reviews in Rolling Stone, Mojo Magazine and Q Magazine were less favorable, although, while criticizing it as a "long haul", the latter did admit that the album contained "some of the best Amos has written." Spin Magazine noted, "Amos writes no less penetratingly than she did on her first album about the way women navigate the intersection between sex and power," while Pop Matters lauded the album for its experimental sound, calling it an "exploration of the journey from that dark, quiet beginning to that beautifully indulgent conclusion," praising the album's "twists and turns along the way."

Renowned music magazine, Drowned In Sound, concluded, "Occasionally vague, sometimes incohesive and a little self-indulgent it may be, but ultimately Abnormally Attracted to Sin is an abnormally attractive piece of work, and another fine example of the shining talent that is Tori Amos."

Origins

Amos lifted Abnormally Attracted to Sins title from a line spoken by a main character in the 1955 film Guys and Dolls.

The album itself was written and conceived in two stages: the first during Amos's 2007 world tour, while promoting American Doll Posse, followed by a spurt of writing and composing during a second phase in July 2008, when Amos reconnected with her former mentor Doug Morris while visiting California to promote a graphic-novel anthology, Comic Book Tattoo .

During her brief stay in California, Amos revisited some of the old homes and haunts she frequented as a twenty-something singer-songwriter in Los Angeles during the late '80s and that, coupled with some of her own reflections and conclusions as a wife, mother and maturing woman, led to another spontaneous creative spell, providing a catalyst for "a second batch of songs", as Amos puts it, which, when combined with the initial new songs written and composed during late-2007 and early-2008, would end up fleshing out the rest of the album.

Due to both financial limitations and disagreements over the project with her previous label, Epic Records, Amos abruptly left the label and, based on an impulsive, creative decision by the artist, the footage shot of her 2007 world-tour morphed into the vignettes or visualettes, as Amos coined them, that would be paired with the new album on an accompanying DVD, The Road Chronicles, as part of an "audio-visual project".

Postponing further work on the planned live DVD of her 2007 world-tour and using some of the complementary footage shot for the DVD to compile a series of vignettes, Amos turned and focused her attention on creating and presenting a multimedia project aimed at deconstructing her previous album's concept and exploring, once again, a more personal and confessional space in the singer-songwriter's life and career, using a juxtaposition between the visual and sonic mediums to broaden and emphasize the personal scope of the project.

"As you know with the archetypes from the last record," said Amos in May 2009, "I was really trying to find sides to myself that I hadn’t allowed myself. I don’t need to put on Pip’s garb to walk into that. That was a huge place to get to."

Amos' brief stay in L.A. during the summer of 2008 also afforded her the opportunity to revisit her old apartment, in which her debut solo-album, 1991's Little Earthquakes, was written, conceived and, in some instances, recorded. She also made a point of visiting the old church behind which the apartment was built. In past interviews, Amos has stated how songs such as Crucify and Precious Things were written while living behind the church, listening to endless sermons and worship-songs for hours at a time, alone, hurt and depressed behind her failure as a musician (1988's Y Kant Tori Read), and her role as a victim and survivor of physical and sexual assault. It was a threshold moment for Amos, providing her a time of respite, solace and a bit of reflection regarding her life and past.

"Things were black and that’s before a whole second part of the record got written and developed when I came back to the states for Comic-Con . And I was on my home ground where I wrote Little Earthquakes and there was a metamorphosis that happened. I passed by that little house where I wrote it and I thought, I took on a lot back then — I can take this on. I can fight. But I had lost how to fight. I had to change everything to fight — all kinds of people had to change. The one thing that kept me going was the love that Tash and Mark had for me. I just saw that I was becoming totally devastated and beaten."

Themes and content

With Amos's four preceding albums serving mouthpieces for various concepts and philosophies—the covers album Strange Little Girls (2001) tackling songs written and performed by men from the perspective of the female characters those men based their individual songs on, Scarlet's Walk (2002) chronicling "Scarlet's journey through post-9/11 America" while exploring Native American-inspired myths and motifs, The Beekeeper (2005) perpetuating a concept within a concept about a beekeeper transfixed by the meanings of and importance behind "the divine feminine" in relation to spirituality, man-made organized-religions and the ancient art of beekeeping, and American Doll Posse (2007) found her portraying five "dolls" based on a selection and symbiosis of various female mythological figures from the Greek pantheon-- Abnormally Attracted to Sin marks a return to a more personal album, as admitted by the artist, that serves as fertile ground for her loosely-veiled confessions, stark and, at times, exuberant disclosures through which she explores her own experiences, and how she has both defined and been defined by them throughout her life and career. Of the album, Amos has called it a personal album, stating, "it is not a concept album. It is a red-headed woman singing songs."

During an interview with Out Magazine a few weeks before the release of Abnormally Attracted to Sin, Amos used the song "Maybe California", a track from the album in which a mother ruminates on leaving her husband and child(ren) "better off" as she contemplates suicide, to explain just how personal writing and composing both the song and the record as a whole were for her: "I wouldn’t have written this record if I hadn’t been pushed — for all kinds of reasons. I don’t want to go into all of it but “Maybe California” doesn’t come from nowhere. You’re not able to write that by having a drink with somebody who’s had the experience and you haven’t. You have to be pushed to that place."

Amos continued driving the point home in another promotional interview, in which she stated that the mother in the song "is pushed to the point where there's nothing that she can give to stop this terrible emotional cancer that has taken over her family - her life - everything around her." Adding credence to the notion that the song is deeply autobiographical, Amos chose to highlight the despair older, more mature women, such as herself, face: "I began to realize how serious this quiet, tragic problem was and that it's not okay to talk about it, whereas teen suicide or early-20's suicide - it gets discussed and it's almost something where there are for it. But mothers contemplating this - my God - they're just going to put you in a nuthouse."

On both the aforementioned track and yet another song, "Ophelia", from the album, Amos addresses her own moments of insecurity and self-loathing as a "mature woman". She observed, "The self-harming mind tries to gain control that feels has been taken from . It's this very strange paradox where, by doing the wounding on yourself, you're in the power position. Although, the idea that you've become your own abuser - it's not necessarily being grasped. And so, you can step into that "Ophelia" state of mind - however old you are - where you start that downward spiral and you're not on the 'front-foot' anymore in life, you're on the 'back foot', and there's a victimization-energy around you."

In an exclusive interview with the German division of Amazon.com, the artist continued her emphasis on "the personal": “I think I’ve been having my own life changes happening just like everybody else, and being in California for a longer period of time than I normally get to be there kind of pushed me to a place of reevaluating where I am in my life and where I was while I was writing Little Earthquakes. And so I think that’s – that’s what you’re hearing .”

In answer to why such a confessional piece still retains, lyrically and, at times, thematically, a sense of obscurity and ambiguity, the artist admitted, "My songs might be confessional, but I don’t like giving away too many details. One of the reasons I’ve made ten albums and maintained my family life is that I respect my own privacy." She confessed, "At times, I have used made-up characters to keep the media at bay."

Amos concluded, during an interview broadcast on youtube.com, "I guess the girl that released Little Earthquakes was not a mother and she was in her 20's and there were a lot of things that she really did discover. She found her voice...and then nine records later, the woman who is putting out Abnormally Attracted to Sin knows what she did with her voice."

In addition to the music, the deluxe edition of the album, as already mentioned, includes the accompanying visualettes that provide a visual narrative to the story.

Production

Amos finished writing and composing Abnormally Attracted to Sin during the spring and summer of 2008. Recording commenced with Amos accompanied by long-time collaborators Matt Chamberlain, Jon Evans, Mark Hawley/"Mac Aladdin" (Amos's husband), and John Philip Shenale, at Amos's husband's studio, Martian Studios, in Cornwall, with final mixing and mastering extending into the initial months of 2009.

Amos chose a dark and intricately "detailed sonic landscape" for the album, and has mentioned that the production that went into the album reminded her of the experience she and her collaborators had creating From the Choirgirl Hotel (1998), which showcased various samplers and synthesizers.

"I’ve been working with the new keyboards and ultimately developing one sound. So, in a way, this record reminded me of the experience that I had From the Choirgirl Hotel, where technology and keyboards and the Bösendorfer were working together in an advanced way."

On developing the sound of one of the songs and of the album in general, Amos declared, "It became much more of a technology experiment the piano being there but in this strange world."

"I think that that there are a lot of different styles on the record," continued Amos in another interview. "I’ve been composing now for over 40 years, and each song in a way takes you to this different place. Maybe some of them are dark, rich caves. Hopefully there’s a nice piano player sitting there taking your request in the cave."

Chart positions

Album

According to Nielsen SoundScan, " Abnormally Attracted To Sin" has sold 92,000 copies in Us.

The chart below lists the album debut positions (within the top 30) in major markets around the globe.

Additionally, the album debuted at #2 on the following two genre-specific Billboard charts: the Top Modern Rock/Alternative Albums chart and the Top Rock Albums chart.

Singles

"Welcome To England" served as the lead single from Abnormally Attracted to Sin. The single was released for digital download on April 14, 2009, in the US, and on May 25, 2009 in the UK, a week after the release of the album. Like most of Amos's singles released this decade, "Welcome to England" was released only as a digital single. The single entered the Billboard Triple A chart in May 2009, and in June ascended into the chart's top 10, making it Amos's fifth single to reach the Triple A top 10.

"Maybe California" reached #1 in Portugal.http

Personnel

Musicians

*Tori Amos – vocals, piano, Wurlitzer, Hammond, synths

*Matt Chamberlain – drums & percussion

*Jon Evans – bass

*Mac Aladdin – electric guitar

*John Philip Shenale – strings, Wurlitzer, Hammond

Production

*Tori Amos – record producer

*Mark Hawley – mixer

*Marcel van Limbeek – mixer

*Christian Lamb – videography

*Karen Collins – photography

Release history

Like all of Amos's post-Atlantic releases, Abnormally Attracted to Sin is offered in both standard and limited edition versions, the latter including a DVD containing 'visualettes' that provide a video accompaniment to most of the album tracks.

References

Category:Tori Amos albums

Category:2009 albums

Category:Universal Records albums

Category:Songs about suicide

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Artist/Band Information

Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos; August 22, 1963) is an American pianist and singer-songwriter. She was at the forefront of a number of female singer-songwriters in the early 1990s and was noteworthy early in her career as one of the few alternative rock performers to use a piano as her primary instrument. Some of her charting singles include "Crucify", "Silent All These Years", "God", "Cornflake Girl", "Caught a Lite Sneeze", "Professional Widow", "Spark", "1000 Oceans", and "A Sorta Fairytale", her most commercially successful single in the U.S. to date.

As of 2005, Amos had sold 12 million albums worldwide. She has been nominated for 10 Grammy Awards.

Early life

Amos was born in Newton, North Carolina. When she was two, her family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where she began to play the piano. By age five, she had begun composing instrumental pieces on piano and, while living in Rockville, Maryland, she won a full scholarship to the Preparatory Division of the Peabody Conservatory of Music. Her scholarship was discontinued at age 11 and she was asked to leave. Amos has asserted that she lost the scholarship because of her interest in rock and popular music, coupled with her dislike for reading from sheet music. At the age of 14 she began playing at piano bars, chaperoned by her father.

Amos first came to local notice by winning a county teen talent contest in 1977, singing a song called "More Than Just a Friend". As a senior at Richard Montgomery High School, she co-wrote "Baltimore" with her brother Mike Amos for a competition involving the Baltimore Orioles. The song won the contest and became her first single, released as a 7" single pressed locally for family and friends during 1980 with another Amos-penned composition as a B-side, "Walking With You". Prior to this period she performed under her middle name, Ellen, but permanently adopted Tori after a friend's boyfriend told her it suited her. At age 21, Amos moved to Los Angeles to pursue her music career after several years performing on the piano bar circuit of the D.C. area.

Atlantic years (1986–2001)

Y Kant Tori Read

In 1986, Amos formed a music group, Y Kant Tori Read, the name of which was a reference to her days at the Peabody Conservatory, where she was able to play songs on her piano by ear, but was never successful at sight reading.David Wallechinsky & Amy Wallace: The New Book of Lists. Canongate, 2005. ISBN 978-1-84195-719-7. In addition to Amos, the group was composed of Steve Caton (who would later play guitars on all her subsequent albums until 1999), drummer Matt Sorum, bass player Brad Cobb and, for a short time, keyboardist Jim Tauber. Following several phases of writing and recording, during which Amos has since asserted that the band lost their musical edge and direction due to interference from record executives, in July 1988, the Y Kant Tori Read's self-titled debut album was released. Although its producer, Joe Chiccarelli, has stated that Amos was very happy with the album at the time, it is now out of print and Amos has expressed no interest in reissuing it. Following the album's commercial failure and the group's subsequent disbanding, Amos began working with other artists (including Stan Ridgway, Sandra Bernhard, and Al Stewart) as a backup vocalist. She also recorded a song called "Distant Storm" for the film China O'Brien; in the credits, the song is attributed to a band called Tess Makes Good. It was the only song recorded by the band, and its only commercial release was in the film.

Solo career

Despite the disappointing reaction to Y Kant Tori Read, Amos still had to comply with her six record contract with Atlantic Records, who in 1989 wanted a new record by March 1990. The initial recordings were declined by the label, which Amos felt was because the album had not been properly presented. The album was reworked and expanded under the guidance of Doug Morris and the musical talents of Steve Caton, Eric Rosse, Will MacGregor, Carlo Nuccio, and Dan Nebenzal, resulting in Little Earthquakes, an album recounting her religious upbringing, sexual awakening, struggle to establish her identity, and sexual assault.

Amos traveled to New Mexico with personal and professional partner Eric Rosse in 1993 to write and largely record her second solo record, Under the Pink. The album was received with mostly favorable reviews and sold enough copies to chart at #12 on the Billboard 200, a significantly higher position than the preceding album's position at #54 on the same chart.

Tori Amos piano.jpgthumbAmos performing on her Dew Drop Inn tour in 1996.

Her third solo album, Boys for Pele, was released in January 1996. The album was recorded in an Irish church, in Delgany, County Wicklow, with Amos taking advantage of the church recording setting to create an album ripe with baroque influences, lending it a darker sound and style. She added harpsichord, harmonium, and clavichord to her keyboard repertoire, and also included such anomalies as a gospel choir, bagpipes, church bells, and drum programming. The album garnered mixed reviews upon its release, with some critics praising its intensity and uniqueness while others bemoaned its comparative impenetrability. Despite the album's erratic lyrical content and instrumentation, the latter of which kept it away from mainstream audiences, Boys for Pele is Amos's most successful simultaneous transatlantic release, reaching #2 on both the Billboard 200 and the UK Top 40 upon its release at the height of her fame.

Fueled by the desire to have her own recording studio to distance herself from record company executives, Amos had the barn of her home in Cornwall converted into a state-of-the-art recording studio, Martian Engineering Studios. Amos enlisted principal band mates Steve Caton on guitars, Jon Evans on bass, and Matt Chamberlain on drums, with whom Amos would record her next two studio albums and embark on world tours.

From the Choirgirl Hotel and To Venus and Back, released in May 1998 and September 1999, respectively, differ greatly from previous albums as Amos's trademark acoustic piano-based sound is largely replaced with arrangements that include elements of electronica, dance music, vocal washes and sonic landscapes. The underlying themes of both albums deal with womanhood, and Amos's own miscarriages and marriage. Reviews for From the Choirgirl Hotel were mostly favorable and praised Amos's continued artistic originality. While not her highest chart debut, debut sales for From the Choirgirl Hotel are Amos's best to date, selling 153,000 copies in its first week. To Venus and Back, a two-disc release of original studio material and live material recorded from the previous world tour, received mostly positive reviews and included the first major-label single available for sale as a digital download.

Motherhood inspired Amos to produce a cover album, recording songs written by men about women and reversing the gender roles to show a woman's perspective. That idea grew into Strange Little Girls, released in September 2001, one year after giving birth to her daughter. The album is Amos's first concept album, with artwork featuring Amos photographed in character of the women portrayed in each song. Amos would later reveal that a stimulus for the album was to end her contract with Atlantic without giving them new original songs; Amos felt that since 1998, the label had not been properly promoting her and had trapped her in a contract by refusing to sell her to another label.

Epic Records years (2002–07)

With her Atlantic contract fulfilled after a 15-year stint, Amos signed to Epic in late 2001. In October 2002, Amos released Scarlet's Walk, another concept album. Described as a "sonic novel", the album explores Amos's alter ego, Scarlet, intertwined with her cross-country concert tour following 9/11. Through the songs, Amos explores such topics as the history of America, American people, Native American history, pornography, masochism, homophobia and misogyny. The album had a strong debut, demonstrating that Amos' fan base remained intact through the label change. However, Scarlet's Walk is Amos' last album to date to reach certified gold status. Note: User must define search parameters, i.e. "Tori Amos".

Tori-amos-closeup-0b.jpgthumbAmos in Berlin in 2007.

Not long after Amos was ensconced with her new label, she received unsettling news when Polly Anthony resigned as president of Epic Records in 2003. Anthony had been one of the primary reasons Amos signed with the label and as a result of her resignation, Amos formed the Bridge Entertainment Group. Further trouble for Amos occurred the following year when her label, Epic/Sony Music Entertainment, merged with BMG Entertainment as a result of the industry's decline. Amos would later hint in interviews that during the creation of her next album, those in charge at the label following the aforementioned merger were interested "only in making money", the effects of which on the album have not been disclosed.

Amos released two more albums with the label, The Beekeeper (2005) and American Doll Posse (2007). Both albums received mixed reviews, some of which stated that the albums suffered from being too long. The Beekeeper was conceptually influenced by the ancient art of beekeeping, which she considered a source of female inspiration and empowerment. Through extensive study, Amos also wove in the stories of the Gnostic gospels and the removal of women from a position of power within the Christian church to create an album based largely on religion and politics. The album debuted at #5 on the Billboard 200, placing her in an elite group of women who have secured five or more US Top 10 album debuts. American Doll Posse, another concept album, was fashioned around a group of girls (the "posse") who are used as a theme of alter-egos of Amos's. Musically and stylistically, the album saw Amos return to a more confrontational nature.The interview with Paul Tingen regarding American Doll Posse can be found here Like its predecessor, American Doll Posse debuted at #5 on the Billboard 200.

During her tenure with Epic Records, Amos also released a retrospective collection titled Tales of a Librarian (2003) through her former label, Atlantic Records; a two-disc DVD set Fade to Red (2006) containing most of Amos's solo music videos, released through the Warner Bros. reissue imprint Rhino; a five disc box set titled A Piano: The Collection (2006), celebrating Amos's 15 year solo career through remastered album tracks, remixes, alternate mixes, demos, and a string of unreleased songs from album recording sessions, also released through Rhino; and numerous official bootlegs from two world tours, The Original Bootlegs (2005) and Legs & Boots (2007) through Epic Records.

Universal Republic years (2008–present)

In May 2008, Amos announced that, due to creative and financial disagreements with Epic Records, she had negotiated an end to her contract with the record label, and would be operating independently of major record labels on future work. In September of the same year, Amos released a live album and DVD, Live at Montreux 1991/1992, through Eagle Rock Entertainment, of two performances she gave at the Montreux Jazz Festival very early on in her career while promoting her debut solo-album, Little Earthquakes. By December, after a chance encounter with chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group, Doug Morris, Amos signed a "joint venture" deal Universal Republic Records.

Abnormally Attracted to Sin, Amos's tenth solo studio-album and her first album released through Universal Republic, was released in May 2009 to mostly positive reviews. The album debuted in the top 10 of the Billboard 200, making it the Amos' seventh album to do so. Abnormally Attracted to Sin, admitted Amos, was a "personal album", not a conceptual one. Continuing her distribution deal with Universal Republic, Amos released Midwinter Graces, her first seasonal album, in November of the same year. The album features reworked versions of traditional carols, as well as original songs written by Amos.

During her contract with the label, Amos recorded vocals for two songs for David Byrne's collaboration album with Fatboy Slim, entitled Here Lies Love, which was released in April 2010. In July of the same year, the DVD Tori Amos- Live from the Artists Den was released exclusively through Barnes & Noble.

After a brief tour from June to September 2010, Amos released the highly exclusive live album "From Russia With Love" in December the same year, recorded live in Moscow on 3 September 2010. The limited edition set included a signature edition Lomography Diana F+ camera, along with 2 lenses, a roll of film and 1 of 5 photographs taken of Tori during her time in Moscow. The set was released exclusively through toriamos.com and only 2000 were produced. It is currently unknown as to whether the album will receive a mass release.

Currently, Amos is writing the music for Samuel Adamson's musical adaptation of the George MacDonald story The Light Princess for the Royal National Theatre, which is expected to debut in 2012, as well as on her own new project.

Discography

To date, Amos has released eleven studio albums throughout her solo career, nine of which were self-produced.

* Little Earthquakes (1992)

* Under The Pink (1994)

* Boys For Pele (1996)

* From the Choirgirl Hotel (1998)

* To Venus and Back (1999)

* Strange Little Girls (2001)

* Scarlet's Walk (2002)

* The Beekeeper (2005)

* American Doll Posse (2007)

* Abnormally Attracted to Sin (2009)

* Midwinter Graces (2009)

Additionally, Amos has released over 30 singles, over 60 B-sides, and has contributed to nine film soundtracks, including Higher Learning (1995), Great Expectations (1998) and Mission: Impossible II (2000) among others.

Tours

Amos, who has been performing in bars and clubs from as early as 1976 and under her professional name as early as 1991 has performed more than 1,000 shows since her first world tour in 1992. In 2003, Amos was voted fifth best touring act by the readers of Rolling Stone magazine. Her concerts are notable for their changing set lists from night to night.

; Little Earthquakes Tour : Amos's first world tour began on January 29, 1992 in London and ended on November 30, 1992 in Auckland. She performed solo with a Yamaha CP-70 unless the venue was able to provide a piano. The tour included 142 concerts around the globe.

; Under the Pink Tour : Amos's second world tour began on February 24, 1994 in Newcastle upon Tyne and ended on December 13, 1994 in Perth, Western Australia. Amos performed solo each night on her iconic Bösendorfer piano, and on a pianino during "Bells for Her". The tour included 181 concerts.

; Dew Drop Inn Tour : The third world tour began on February 23, 1996 in Ipswich, England, and ended on November 11, 1996 in Boulder. Amos performed each night on piano, harpsichord, and harmonium, with Steve Caton on guitar on some songs. The tour included 187 concerts.

; Plugged '98 Tour : Amos's first band tour. Amos, on piano and Kurzweil keyboard, was joined by Steve Caton on guitar, Matt Chamberlain on drums, and Jon Evans on bass. The tour began on April 18, 1998 in Fort Lauderdale and ended on December 3, 1998 in East Lansing, Michigan, including 137 concerts.

; Five and a Half Weeks Tour / To Dallas and Back : Amos's fifth tour was North America–only. The first part of the tour was co-headlining with Alanis Morissette and featured the same band and equipment line-up as in 1998. Amos and the band continued for eight shows before Amos embarked on a series of solo shows. The tour began on August 18, 1999 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and ended on December 9, 1999 in Denver, including 46 concerts.

; Strange Little Tour : This tour was Amos's first since becoming a mother in 2000 and her first tour fully solo since 1994 (Steve Caton was present on some songs in 1996). It saw Amos perform on piano, Rhodes piano, and Wurlitzer electric piano, and though the tour was in support of her covers album, the set lists were not strictly covers-oriented. Having brought her one-year-old daughter on the road with her, this tour was also one of Amos's shortest ventures, lasting just three months. It began on August 30, 2001 in London and ended on December 17, 2001 in Milan, including 55 concerts.

; On Scarlet's Walk / Lottapianos Tour : Amos's seventh tour saw her reunited with Matt Chamberlain and Jon Evans, but not Steve Caton. The first part of the tour, which featured Amos on piano, Rhodes, and Wurlitzer, was six months long and Amos went out again in the summer of 2003 for a tour with Ben Folds opening. The tour began on November 7, 2002 in Tampa and ended on September 4, 2003 in West Palm Beach, featuring 124 concerts. The final show of the tour was filmed and released as part of a DVD/CD set titled Welcome to Sunny Florida (the set also included a studio EP titled Scarlet's Hidden Treasures, an extension of the Scarlet's Walk album).

; Original Sinsuality Tour / Summer of Sin : This tour began on April 1, 2005 in Clearwater, Florida, with Amos on piano, two Hammond B-3 organs, and Rhodes. The tour also encompassed Australia for the first time since 1994. Amos announced at a concert on this tour that she would never stop touring but would scale down the tours. Amos returned to the road in August and September for the Summer of Sin North America leg, ending on September 17, 2005 in Los Angeles. The tour featured "Tori's Piano Bar", where fans could nominate cover songs on Amos's website which she would then choose from to play in a special section of each show. One of the songs chosen was the Kylie Minogue hit "Can't Get You Out of My Head", which Amos dedicated to her the day after Minogue's breast cancer was announced to the public. Other songs performed by Amos include The Doors' "People are Strange", Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus", Joni Mitchell's "The Circle Game", Madonna's "Live to Tell" and "Like a Prayer", Björk's "Hyperballad", Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks" (which she debuted in Austin, Texas, just after the events of Hurricane Katrina), Kate Bush's "And Dream of Sheep" and Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over", dedicating it to drummer Paul Hester who had died a week before. The entire concert tour featured 82 concerts, and six full-length concerts were released as The Original Bootlegs.

; American Doll Posse World Tour : This was Amos's first tour with a full band since her 1999 Five and a Half Weeks Tour, accompanied by long-time band mates Jon Evans and Matt Chamberlain, with guitarist Dan Phelps rounding out Amos's new band. Amos's equipment included her piano, a Hammond B-3 organ, and two Yamaha S90 ES keyboards. The tour kicked off with its European leg in Rome, Italy on May 28, 2007, which lasted through July, concluding in Israel; the Australian leg took place during September; the North American leg lasted from October to December 16, 2007, when the tour concluded in Los Angeles. Amos opened each show dressed as one of the four non-Tori personae from the album, then Amos would emerge as herself to perform for the remaining two-thirds of the show. The entire concert tour featured 93 concerts, and 27 full-length concerts of the North American tour were released as official bootlegs in the Legs and Boots series.

; Sinful Attraction Tour : For her tenth tour, Amos returned to the trio format of her 2002 and 2003 tours with bassist Jon Evans and drummer Matt Chamberlain while expanding her lineup of keyboards by adding three M-Audio MIDI controllers to her ensemble of her piano, a Hammond B-3 organ, and a Yamaha S90 ES keyboard. The North American and European band tour began on 10 July 2009 in Seattle, Washington and ended in Warsaw on 10 October 2009. A solo leg through Australia began in Melbourne on 12 November 2009 and ended in Brisbane on 24 November 2009. The entire tour featured 63 concerts.

Award nominations

In print

Released in conjunction with The Beekeeper, Amos co-authored an autobiography with rock music journalist Ann Powers entitled Piece by Piece (2005). The book's subject is Amos's interest in mythology and religion, exploring her songwriting process, rise to fame, and her relationship with Atlantic Records.

Comics released Comic Book Tattoo (2008), a collection of comic stories, each based on or inspired by songs recorded by Amos. Editor Rantz Hoseley worked with Amos to gather 80 different artists for the book, including Pia Guerra, David Mack, and Leah Moore.

Other publications include Tori Amos: Lyrics (2001) and an earlier biography, Tori Amos: All These Years (1996). Additionally, Amos and her music have been the subject of numerous official and unofficial books, as well as academic criticism.

Personal life

Amos is the third child of Rev. Dr. Edison and Mary Ellen Amos. She was born at the Old Catawba Hospital in Newton, North Carolina, during a trip from their Georgetown home in Washington, D.C.. Her maternal grandparents were of mixed European and Eastern Cherokee ancestry; of particular importance to her as a child was her grandfather, Calvin Clinton Copeland, who was a great source of inspiration and guidance to her as a young child, offering a more pantheistic spiritual alternative to her father and paternal grandmother's traditional Christianity.

Early in her professional career, Amos befriended author Neil Gaiman, who became a fan after she referenced him in the song "Tear In Your Hand" and also in print interviews. Although created before the two met, the character Delirium from Gaiman's The Sandman series (or even her sister Death) is inspired by Amos; Gaiman has stated that "they steal shamelessly from each other". She wrote the foreword to his collection Death: The High Cost of Living; he in turn wrote the introduction to Comic Book Tattoo. Gaiman is godfather to her daughter and a poem written for her birth, Blueberry Girl, was published as a children's book of the same name in 2009.

In June 1994, Amos co-founded RAINN, The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, a toll-free help line in the US connecting callers with their local rape crisis center. Amos, herself a survivor of sexual assault, was seen as unlocking the silence of her assault through her music; thus "Unlock the Silence" went on to become a year-long campaign for RAINN when Amos became a national spokesperson for the organization. By the summer of 2006, RAINN had received its one millionth caller and the organization's success has led to it ranking in "America's 100 Best Charities" by Worth, and one of the "Top 10 Best Charities" by Marie Claire.

Amos married English sound engineer Mark Hawley on February 22, 1998. Their only child, a daughter named Natashya "Tash" Lórien Hawley, was born on September 5, 2000. They divide their time between Sewall's Point in Florida and Cornwall in England.

Notes and references