'Men's songs' get the Tori Amos treatment
By Mark Brown, News Popular Music Critic
Fans and critics were surprised. Here's ultra-feminist Tori Amos with an
album of songs that put women down, keep them subdued -- even songs that
kill them.
"As per normal, everything is getting misinterpreted and everything is
getting understood," Amos says, happy with the contradiction. "I try and
put out work that creates thought and discussion. Hopefully, I do my
research."
And StrangeLittleGirls is well-researched. Amos, curious about the rise
of sexual rage in music she's been hearing, had a mission. She'd take
songs, written by people as diverse as The Beatles and Eminem, that
address women from a man's standpoint and turn them inside out.
It's an odd approach for a woman who'd always written her own songs,
songs such as Cornflake Girl and God that have garnered her a strong
following among women and men -- witness tonight's instantly sold-out
show at the Paramount Theatre.
But to address the rage she was hearing, she had to understand it. "I
always believe you have to go to the venom for the antidote," she says.
She wanted to mix those songs with other songs and put them in a woman's
voice. Thus Eminem's infamous Bonnie & Clyde '97 features Amos cooing
quietly to a small child as her mother's body is dumped in a lake, while
10CC's I'm Not in Love is stripped to its hateful core.
"Some of them are beautiful words. Some of them have compassion. Some of
them are words of death," Amos says. "I wanted the whole gamut there."
Misogyny and brutality have been present in lyrics forever, but the rage
has been more blatant in the past few years, she believes.
"It's something that's based on the last two years of what's been going
on in the West," she says. "That's when I was really made aware of the
seeds that have taken root, ... this sort of male hatred for women and
gay men. Or I should say malice instead of hatred -- sort of a male rage
that people have tapped into. I can't tell you why; I'm not a sociologist."
She's all in favor of people's right to write and sing these songs.
"You can't start a movement if it's not already potent, even if it's
hiding in people's psyches," she says. "This movement wouldn't have taken
root if there was nothing for it to latch onto. These artists are tapping
into something that already exists."
So she got a group of male acquaintances together to run songs past them
and to have them bring songs to her, any songs about men and women. Thus
StrangeLittleGirls runs the gamut from Neil Young's Heart of Gold to Joe
Jackson's Real Men.
"It's not just me projecting onto men what I think they listen to," Amos
says. "They brought the material to me and said, 'This is what we listen
to, and this is what it means to me.' "
And she found herself learning a lot, about men and about herself.
"Sometimes they'd say things to me where I was just rolling my eyes," she
says. "Like the Heart of Gold discussion; men would say, 'I really love
this song because I'm looking for a woman who would just understand that
I'm a player.' Understand what about it? So that one was irresistible.
"On the other hand, a lot of them would say: 'Can you tell us one thing,
Tori? How come women always choose the guy who's never gonna hear them,
who's gonna chew them up and spit them out and leave them by the side of
the road?' I needed to think about that." That's how Tom Waits' Time and
Jackson's Real Men ended up on the disc -- songs of understanding to
balance the rage.
"This isn't about men dominating women. It's about the question of what
are powerful words and their effect," she says. "Words can wound and
words can heal."
Or do both. I'm Not in Love has been cast as a song of coy flirting when
its words are actually full of denial, self-aggrandizement and the
groundwork for a disastrous relationship. "You wanna play this one out?
It's not gonna be fun in the end. Somebody's gonna lose," Amos says.
She acknowledges that she's found herself in relationships where men
tried to exert power over her; she was shocked to find herself seeking
out such relationships.
"Because of our experiences or what we're brought up with, ... we all
have our stuff," she says. "I don't mean to sound West Coasty, but ... I
was up to no good for a while with myself, not treating myself well and
getting involved in situations where I wasn't respecting myself and I let
others disrespect me. I just thought that was how you operated; I thought
that's how this kind of dance happened."
She was able to see that and change it. "What I consider a powerful man
now isn't a guy who has power over somebody or who wants to have power
over somebody," she says.
"For me now, it's somebody who's a safe place, where I'd leave my
daughter. It's somebody that's a good listener. That's a powerful man.
That's a core thing for this record -- how we as women have contributed
to the definition of what is a powerful man."
Contact Mark Brown at (303) 892-2674 or brownm@RockyMountainNews.com.
