{"id":931076,"date":"2026-05-01T16:47:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/931076\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T16:47:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:47:33","slug":"tori-amos-on-her-new-album-skipping-lilith-fair-and-her-muses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/931076\/","title":{"rendered":"Tori Amos on Her New Album, Skipping Lilith Fair, and Her Muses"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\t\tT
\n\t\tori Amos<\/a> just released her 18th studio album, In Times of Dragons<\/a>, a dark, allegorical work that stands as her most politically charged record to date. At its center is a character called the Lizard Demon, an amalgamation of powerful, predatory men. Amos is evasive about the specifics: \u201cI\u2019m not saying that\u2019s in Washington, D.C. We\u2019re not mentioning names,\u201d she says when we ask. Instead, she constructs a narrative in which her protagonist is trapped in a life of luxury, married to this mysterious bad guy, before ultimately escaping.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough Amos typically writes on her own, In Times of Dragons marks a rare shift: The album includes contributions from her 25-year-old daughter, Natasha \u201cTash\u201d Hawley, who will graduate from law school this year. The collaboration emerged almost by accident. After she\u2019d mapped out the album\u2019s narrative, Amos found herself stuck on the music. The breakthrough came when Tash resurfaced months-old recordings of the two casually improvising at the piano. It\u2019s just one way that this album stands out in a career full of surprising choices.<\/p>\n

\n\tRolling Stone caught up with Amos ahead of her European tour to talk about the new album\u2019s urgency, her life lessons in the music industry, why she skipped Lilith Fair in the Nineties, and the creative path that has defined her career from early rejection to reinvention and beyond.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYour daughter has three co-writing credits on this album, which is rare for you. How did that happen?<\/strong>
I was struggling with this record, and I told her and she said, \u201cMom, six months ago, we were hanging out and I recorded us just jamming at the piano in Florida.\u201d And I said, in my menopausal mind, \u201cWe were jamming?\u201d And she sent me \u201cStrawberry Moon\u201d and \u201cStronger Together.\u201d That gave me the launch.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019ve made political albums before, but this one feels so much more raw and urgent. What made it different from your other political albums?<\/strong>
Come on, nobody really needed me in the Obama years. [On this album,] the Lizard Demon [character] is based on real people. It\u2019s an amalgamation of men. We\u2019re not mentioning names. So now we\u2019re walking down the fork in the road that goes way back. What if I would\u2019ve chosen a different man in my life? I had to allow myself to make that choice to write this record because this had to be a narrative. If you\u2019re going to document our times, the only way is through allegory, I think, to allow other people in so they can join the story.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tHow did you find your voice as a singer at the start of your career?<\/strong>
It took me a while. I imitated everybody. I\u2019ve been called a third-rate Pat Benatar<\/a>. I played piano bars, so I did the covers. That was my big teaching. You listen to other singers, Stevie Nicks<\/a>, the whole gamut, and you\u2019d find the ones you can do. I\u2019d stand in front of the mirror and try to do \u201cMagic Man.\u201d<\/a> So you try and emulate these women and find your voice vocally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat advice would you give to your younger self when you first released your debut, Little Earthquakes?<\/strong>
Don\u2019t piss off the suits. Open champagne instead of thinking you can piss on their desk. Just open the champagne and drink it and tell them how great they are, instead of telling them the truth. That would\u2019ve served me so well.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat do you wish someone had told you about performing live?\u00a0<\/strong>
Study Prince<\/a>. Study Robert Plant<\/a>. Study Jim Morrison<\/a>. The muses told me that, and I did. So I got that right. I studied them. I watched them plug into a voltage. If you go out there as yourself, that\u2019s where you get it all wrong. You need to leave yourself in the fucking dressing room. Be a channel. Let the muses and the songs come through you. The thing about performing is it is not about you. If you get that, you get it right. Ego at the door. You must serve. You surrender. The piano must play you.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen did your muses start appearing?\u00a0<\/strong>
When I was really young, but then I lost sight of them when I started chasing to make it in the music industry. After seven and a half years of being rejected and me going, \u201cI can\u2019t do this piano-bar thing for too much longer \u2026\u201d Luckily, the piano found its way back to me, but it was that crash and burn before I made Little Earthquakes<\/a> [in 1992]. I\u2019m so grateful for that because in the dark times during Boys for Pele<\/a> [in 1996] \u2014 that was such a controversial record, it was such a tough time. If I hadn\u2019t had that experience in 1988 where [my early band] Y Kant Tori Read went scorched-earth, I wouldn\u2019t have been able to withstand the heat in 1996. Because of that, I made a commitment to stay true to the muses.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou never performed at Lilith Fair. In your 1998 Rolling Stone cover story<\/a>, you said, \u201cThis isn\u2019t just about eating some chicken and hearing your favorite female singers. You walk into my show, you walk into my world. It\u2019s a film every night. I can\u2019t impose that on Lilith and vice versa.\u201d What are your feelings looking back?<\/strong>
I\u2019d send that to Sarah [McLachlan]<\/a> \u2014 she\u2019d find it funny. She\u2019d laugh her ass off. She\u2019s got a good sense of humor. [Lilith] was a great business model. She did a great thing. I\u2019ll be honest with you, I\u2019ve got to give it up to her. She asked me to headline. I have a lot of respect for Sarah. At the time, I was trying to find my sovereignty. Being a part of a festival like that didn\u2019t feel like my path to find it.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat is your favorite city in the world?<\/strong>
London. Hands down. I first came to London in 1991. I didn\u2019t know anybody. So I would go to the Tower of London with my sandwich and talk to the dead queens. I would imagine Anne Boleyn coming through Traitors\u2019 Gate. I would sit there on a bench and wait for her to come. And she came every time. And she and I would have these conversations. They were usually very mundane.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat did you guys talk about?<\/strong>
She would say things to me like, \u201cTori, don\u2019t try too hard to make friends. Keep coming back to Traitors\u2019 Gate. I come every day. So you can come talk to me. Just take a step back, and don\u2019t be too eager, and you\u2019ll be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photographs in illustration:<\/p>\n

Kasia Wozniak; Rob Verhorst\/Redferns\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"T ori Amos just released her 18th studio album, In Times of Dragons, a dark, allegorical work that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":931077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,240961,88927,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-931076","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-the-last-word","11":"tag-tori-amos","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116500342297852815","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=931076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/931077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}