Most likely just the tracks from the CD version that weren't on the original vinyl
Here in My Head
Crazy
Sister Janet
Mother Revolution
Most likely just the tracks from the CD version that weren't on the original vinyl
Here in My Head
Crazy
Sister Janet
Mother Revolution
he/him
Ooh you're probably right but hoping there are a few others.
he/him
Little Amsterdam with the improv intro from 7/14/23 would be most welcome. It was amazing in person and I'd love to have it in soundboard quality
Thank you @JakeXo for welcoming me! I might ask for help decoding Tori's lyrics because boy oh boy her intellectual capabilities are beyond this world. So far, I have listened to Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink, both are phenomenal records and made sense lyrically (Toriphoria helps lol). I might skip Boys For Pele for now due to it being the hardest Tori album lyrically, and listen to From The Choirgirl Hotel.
Please don't say this. Happy Phantom is among my Top 10 Tori Songs.
he/him
Welcome. I definitely think you should go in order. Choirgirl is even more mind blowing when you hear what preceded it. Plus, Pele is dense and I believe requires and rewards with repeated listens. Not sure how may times you're listening to each before you go to the next, but yeah that's my rec.
Ok, I will take note of it! I might be bugging you to help me with the lyrics ;)
Honestly understanding Tori's lyricism is an ongoing task for many of us, even two decades on as fans.
I'd say don't get stuck at Pele though, it's a long record and when I was a newish fan, I tended to find it quite impenetrable before eventually finding my way into it later. Skipping ahead to Choirgirl / Venus and going back to it later if it doesn't click would be my suggestion.
With any artist I've gotten really into, I've found that I always connected first with mood, melody, production, vocal. Lyrical content tends to come a bit later. For example, there are Tori songs that I considered among my favorites of hers for YEARS and if you had asked me what they were about, it would've been "hell if I know" (this may still be the case).
Boys For Pele is a very dense, heady record. But it was also the first album of hers that really clicked with me. Even if I didn't always get what she was talking about, I got that she was taking me somewhere, we were going on a journey together. And I'm always down for a journey, so I gave her my hand. Flying trapeze, peanut butter hands, Big Bird and hookers, Moneypenny's rights, whatever, it's world-building and it's magic and I just kept on the yellow brick road. With her, my initial reaction has always been visceral/primal first, intellectual later.
All that to say I'm a big believer in a linear progression through the catalog. Let it wash over you and overwhelm you. And don't put too much pressure on yourself to get it all at once. If this house feels like home, you'll have time to understand what the bricks are made of.
Boys For Pele is a very dense, heady record. But it was also the first album of hers that really clicked with me. Even if I didn't always get what she was talking about, I got that she was taking me somewhere, we were going on a journey together. And I'm always down for a journey, so I gave her my hand. Flying trapeze, peanut butter hands, Big Bird and hookers, Moneypenny's rights, whatever, it's world-building and it's magic and I just kept on the yellow brick road. With her, my initial reaction has always been visceral/primal first, intellectual later.
All that to say I'm a big believer in a linear progression through the catalog. Let it wash over you and overwhelm you. And don't put too much pressure on yourself to get it all at once. If this house feels like home, you'll have time to understand what the bricks are made of.
I bought all the singles from the first album way before I found the cash to buy Little Earthquakes. I stuck them all on my walkman and its like I had a different first album experiance
Thoughts, Upside Down, Sugar, Here. In My Head, Angie, Thankyou, and Precious Things and Mother (in Live form), along with the singles
Anyone else?
Thoughts, Upside Down, Sugar, Here. In My Head, Angie, Thankyou, and Precious Things and Mother (in Live form), along with the singles
Anyone else?
he/him
Somewhat similar but I started getting into Tori in early 2002. By then, you could download them off the internet. However even then, the copies available where either less-than-perfect quality and some more rare than others. I ended up buying a few of the singles that had my favorites.
Discovering b-sides pre-streaming was magical, like finding little buried treasures. There was a warmth to them, like you found something intimate. Especially with Tori when so many of those songs stand strongly alongside the songs that made their albums.
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I miss hereinmyhead something fierce. It was an invaluable resource for me with her b-sides and remixes.
You could gather a dozen b-sides from 91-98 and come up with an album just as potent and haunting as any proper album from that period.
The way the industry changed in the 21st century really hurt that part of Tori's career/catalog. There's a lot to "discover" in her '90s, whereas in the '00s you generally just find it all on the album. There's no Big Wheel EP with three b-sides and a bonkers live cut. I think the Pet Shop Boys are great about keeping that alive in the current climate, their singles are still full of little goodies. I'd love to see Tori do something in that direction, even if it's only digital.
We're past the point of multi-single campaigns for her new music, but I can see choosing four key album tracks and building little EPs around them with unreleased material from the recording sessions, and issuing those on streaming services once every few months to keep the fun of the era alive.
The way the industry changed in the 21st century really hurt that part of Tori's career/catalog. There's a lot to "discover" in her '90s, whereas in the '00s you generally just find it all on the album. There's no Big Wheel EP with three b-sides and a bonkers live cut. I think the Pet Shop Boys are great about keeping that alive in the current climate, their singles are still full of little goodies. I'd love to see Tori do something in that direction, even if it's only digital.
We're past the point of multi-single campaigns for her new music, but I can see choosing four key album tracks and building little EPs around them with unreleased material from the recording sessions, and issuing those on streaming services once every few months to keep the fun of the era alive.
The problem for Tori was the wheels totally fell off the choirgirl singles campaign particularly in the UK, singles would be listed and delisted - there was meant to be a Jackie’s single with new B-Sides (like a virgin was mentioned - although I think this is thought to be an original song with the same title) and Swirl got a release in Europe but not the UK. Then the messy remix stuff, it just didn’t work. She never really had a proper singles campaign after that with B-Sides etc.
She might not ever do that, just because so many people have interpreted the songs in their own ways over the years. She may feel that giving "definitive" explanations might violate the sanctity of the relationship between listener and song. She even said in an interview that people have told her, "you have no idea what this song is about" and she just steps back and lets the listener have their own take on it, she thinks that take is just as valid as her own.
I highly recommend the book Piece By Piece, which she did in 2005 with journalist Ann Powers. There's a lot of great information in it about songwriting, touring, the music industry; and she does have little song capsules throughout that don't exactly lay bare her motivations in writing certain songs, but they might accent your experience with the songs.
If you can find it, a very nice resource for information is the book The Myth of Tori, compiled by Jason Elijah. His yessaid.com website is also an excellent resource for interviews, comments from Tori on her songs, etc.
But The Myth of Tori is his attempt to make a coherent narrative for all of her albums using just Tori's words. So he had to comb through hundreds of interviews and piece together all the relevant bits in order to make that narrative. So if she talked about the process of recording Under The Pink, for example, in 1994, 1995, 1998, 2002, etc. in multiple interviews, all of that is synthesized in this book. Again, it may not make her thought process behind the lyrics any more clear, but lots of great little bits about the process of a really fantastic artist.