Ever since the new Tori Amos record came out, I've had no quarter from the hyperventilating 30-something female friends of mine who just can't shut the fuck up about it. I hate her, and always have. And when I try to explain why, they get all pissy and moany and offendy and accuse me of picking on a rape victim. Not so. And here's why.
I've had enough things happen in my life that are shitty enough to qualify for "life altering." And for the most part, you've never read about any of them. Sure, you've read about flubbed first-ever sexual encounters and porn on Wal-Mart TVs and various mishaps with various body fluids in various places... But none of these things could really be considered "life altering." They're not gross victimizations of my person. They're not serious issues that shouldn't be demeaned by my exploitation.
Which is why I find Tori Amos so fucking gross.
Tori Amos was a fame-chasing trendy pop mistress who failed in her pathetic band Y Kant Tori Read. She dressed like Madonna and and sang like Madonna with Shit In Her Mouth:
She sucked.
Then, the label (Atlantic, who gave her a 6 record deal for whatever fucking reason), decided to repackage her. In their infinite wisdom (and of course, following the trend of grunge music that was rising), they listened to a Sarah McLaghlan record and said "Ok, now you sound like that."
In order to further her artistic whatevers, she drew from these deep dark experiences in her life that sounded a lot like rape. In recent years, there's been a rather large crusade across the net to actually disprove her allegations of rape - I won't ever go that far, because I wasn't there and I take that kind of shit seriously.
Which is my point. I know several assault victims who, even many years later, won't talk about the event. It's not that they're repressed, it's that they won't let it become who they are. And that's what Tori is all about - the personification of her own misery. It's fairly disgusting, and if she were to start to break out now, we'd all pile on and call her Emo. But because a ton of impressionable artsy grungy girls listened to her when they were teenagers and felt like they finally understood what it means to be A WOMAN!!!!! and now all those impressionable artsy grungy girls are stupid whiny adult WOMEN!!!!! who love Tori, she has this grandfathered-in legitimacy.
I don't dispute that her voice has improved over the years, and I don't doubt that she plays a mean piano. But if she wrote out her lyrics and posted it to any forum on the internet, she'd quickly have this graphic pasted just below her posts:
When you're a teenager, this kind of nonsense feels great. It's fantastic to be so misunderstood that only a million-selling recording artist really gets you. But come on... Tori Amos sucks. I have no problem with making a spectacle out of one's misery -- I've made an entire career out of it. But I feel that when the context shifts from "check this out" or "wanna laugh?" to "Oh woe is me!!! I'm a sad artist with a 6 record deal and blew the first record on late 80's clichepop, so now I have to change gears -- quick, what's a subject people will actually take seriously????" then you lose any and all merit. And then you suck.
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