60 Facts About Tori Amos

1.

Tori Amos was born on Myra Ellen Amos; August 22,1963 and is an American singer-songwriter and pianist.

2.

Tori Amos is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range.

3.

Tori Amos had to leave at the age of eleven when her scholarship was discontinued for what Rolling Stone described as "musical insubordination".

4.

Amos was the lead singer of the short-lived 1980s pop group Y Kant Tori Read before achieving her breakthrough as a solo artist in the early 1990s.

5.

Tori Amos has received five MTV VMA nominations and eight Grammy Award nominations, and won an Echo Klassik award for her Night of Hunters classical crossover album.

6.

Tori Amos is listed on VH1's 1999 "100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll" at number 71.

7.

Tori Amos is the third child of Mary Ellen and Edison McKinley Tori Amos.

8.

Tori Amos was born on August 22,1963 at the Old Catawba Hospital in Newton, North Carolina, during a trip from their Georgetown home in Washington, DC, and was named Myra Ellen Amos.

9.

When she was two years old, her family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where her father had transplanted his Methodist ministry from its original base in Washington, DC Her older brother and sister took piano lessons, but Tori Amos did not need them.

10.

Tori Amos has described seeing music as structures of light since early childhood, an experience consistent with chromesthesia:.

11.

Tori Amos studied classical piano at Peabody from 1968 to 1974.

12.

Tori 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.

13.

In 1972, the Tori Amos family moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, where her father became pastor of the Good Shepherd United Methodist church.

14.

At thirteen, Tori Amos began playing at gay bars and piano bars, chaperoned by her father.

15.

Tori Amos won a county teen talent contest in 1977, singing a song called "More Than Just a Friend".

16.

The song did not win the contest but became her first single, released as a 7-inch single pressed locally for family and friends in 1980 with another Tori Amos-penned composition as a B-side, "Walking With You".

17.

Producer Narada Michael Walden responded favorably: he and Tori Amos cut some tracks together, but none were released.

18.

In 1984, Tori Amos moved to Los Angeles to pursue her music career after several years performing on the piano bar circuit in the DC area.

19.

In 1986, Amos formed a musical group called Y Kant Tori Read, named for her difficulty sight-reading.

20.

The band went through several iterations of songwriting and recording; Tori Amos has said interference from record executives caused the band to lose its musical edge and direction during this time.

21.

Finally, in July 1988, the band's self-titled debut album, Y Kant Tori Amos Read, was released.

22.

Tori Amos recorded a song called "Distant Storm" for the film China O'Brien.

23.

The initial recordings were declined by the label, which Tori Amos felt was because the album had not been properly presented.

24.

Tori 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.

25.

The album was recorded in an Irish church, in Delgany, County Wicklow, with Tori Amos taking advantage of the church's acoustics.

26.

Reviews for From the Choirgirl Hotel were mostly favorable and praised Tori Amos' continued artistic originality.

27.

Shortly after giving birth to her daughter, Tori Amos decided to record a cover album, taking songs written by men about women and reversing the gender roles to reflect a woman's perspective.

28.

In October 2002, Tori Amos released Scarlet's Walk, another concept album.

29.

Not long after Tori Amos was ensconced with her new label, she received unsettling news when Polly Anthony resigned as president of Epic Records in 2003.

30.

Anthony had been one of the primary reasons Tori Amos signed with the label and as a result of her resignation, Tori Amos formed the Bridge Entertainment Group.

31.

Tori Amos released two more albums with Epic, The Beekeeper and American Doll Posse.

32.

In May 2008, Tori 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.

33.

Abnormally Attracted to Sin, admitted Tori Amos, is a "personal album", not a conceptual one, with the album exploring themes of power, boundaries, and the subjective view of sin.

34.

In September 2011, Tori Amos released her first classical-style music album, Night of Hunters, featuring variations on a theme to pay tribute to composers such as Bach, Chopin, Debussy, Granados, Satie and Schubert, on the Deutsche Grammophon label, a division of Universal Music Group.

35.

Tori Amos recorded the album with several musicians, including the Apollon Musagete string quartet.

36.

On May 1,2012, Tori Amos announced the formation of her own record label, Transmission Galactic, which she said she intended to use to develop new artists.

37.

Tori Amos stated in an interview that a new album and tour would materialize in 2014 and that it would be a "return to contemporary music".

38.

In Sydney, Tori Amos performed two orchestral concerts, reminiscent of the Gold Dust Orchestral Tour, with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Sydney Opera House.

39.

On November 18,2016, Tori Amos released a deluxe version of the album Boys for Pele to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the original release.

40.

On September 8,2017, Tori Amos released Native Invader, accompanied by a world tour.

41.

The initial inspiration for the album came from a trip that Tori Amos took to the Great Smoky Mountains, home of her alleged Native American ancestors; however, two events deeply influenced the final record: in November 2016, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States of America; two months later, in January 2017, Tori Amos' mother, Mary Ellen, had a stroke that left her unable to speak.

42.

On November 9,2020, Tori Amos announced the release of a holiday-themed EP entitled Christmastide on December 4, digitally and on limited-edition vinyl.

43.

Tori Amos recorded the EP remotely due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

44.

On September 20,2021, Tori Amos announced her sixteenth studio album, Ocean to Ocean, which was released on October 29.

45.

Tori Amos embarked on a European and United States tour in support of the album in 2022, and is continuing to support the album with a European Tour in 2023.

46.

Tori Amos appeared at the EPIX original docuseries Women Who Rock which premiered on July 10,2022.

47.

Amos and her music have been the subject of numerous official and unofficial books, as well as academic critique, including Tori Amos: Lyrics illustrated by Herb Leonhard, and an earlier biography, Tori Amos: All These Years by Kalen Rogers.

48.

Tori Amos released her second memoir, called Resistance: A Songwriter's Story of Hope, Change, and Courage on 5 May 2020.

49.

Tori Amos married English sound engineer Mark Hawley on February 22,1998.

50.

Tori Amos and her husband Mark have one daughter, Natashya Lorien Hawley, born September 5,2000.

51.

Early in her professional career, Tori Amos befriended author Neil Gaiman, who became a fan after she referred to him in the song "Tear in Your Hand" and in print interviews.

52.

Tori Amos wrote the foreword to his collection Death: The High Cost of Living; he in turn wrote the introduction to Comic Book Tattoo.

53.

In 2019, Tori Amos performed the British standard "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" over the closing credits of Gaiman's TV series Good Omens, based on the novel of the same name written by Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

54.

Tori Amos was the first national spokesperson for the organization and has continued to be closely associated with RAINN.

55.

Tori 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.

56.

In 2003, Tori Amos was voted fifth best touring act by the readers of Rolling Stone magazine.

57.

Tori Amos's concerts are notable for their changing set lists from night to night.

58.

On May 21,2020, Tori Amos was invited to and gave special remarks at her alma mater Johns Hopkins University's 2020 Commencement ceremony.

59.

Tori Amos appears as a wedding singer in the film Mona Lisa Smile.

60.

Tori Amos previously auditioned for a role as a member of Beverly's band, Cherry Bomb, in the 1986 film Howard the Duck.