Thanks to almost extraterrestrial sensory impressions, Tori Amos has achieved earthly success with unusual songs. Four of them tell the story of her life.
A Sorta Fairytale, 2002: The title of the classically trained American's biggest hit can also be applied to her career: Tori Amos (54) has never done anything other than music. As a child prodigy, she has been playing the piano since she could reach the keys. At two she plays songs she has only heard once, at three she starts composing. The fairy tale continues: the Peabody Institute, a conservatory in Baltimore, gives Amos a scholarship at the age of five as the youngest student in the history of the institute - only to kick her out again at eleven. The reason: Amos is not only interested in classical music, but also in rock and pop. The expulsion didn't do her any harm: the girl simply has fabulous talent.
Amber Wave, 2002: Amos sees an amber wave or a different colored light being when she has finished a song. She is born with chromaesthesia, an overlapping of sensory perceptions that trigger color perceptions when listening to sound sequences. "In thirty-five years," says Amos, "I've never seen the same being of light in different songs. Each song is a unique, architectural composition of architecture, color and light. I entered this extraterrestrial world for the first time when I was three years old, when I heard a composition by Bela Bartok. It was pure euphoria."
Tori Amos
Spark (Funke), 1998: It takes a while for the euphoria or spark to spread to the audience. Amos was already touring bars at the tender age of 13 - always supervised by her Christian parents. But it takes a smaller earthquake to reach a larger audience. Her debut album "Little Earthquakes" brought her the long-awaited success in 1992. Since then, the spark has spread like wildfire: fifteen solo albums, eight Grammy nominations, an Echo Award, five nominations for the MTV VMA Award, an estimated fortune of 55 million dollars and over 1000 concerts.
God, 1994: Amos is actually a kind of goddess herself - at least in the universe of US star author Neil Gaiman (56). In his graphic novel epic "The Sandman", she is immortalized as the goddess Delirium. The mezzo-soprano also regularly catapults her fans into delirium: in September with her new tour and the new album of the same name, "Native Invader".
We love Tori Amos for songs like this: video for "Crucify"
