Tori Amos covers "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

To be quite honest, I probably would not have made it through my high school years without Tori Amos. Those times - they were, as they say, BRUTAL - and without being able to cast aside my algebra homework, lay across my bed and have a good solid cry while blasting Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink on the uppermost volumes of my SONY boom box I am just not sure I would have survived it all. What is also interesting is that I was introduced to Ms Amos via the most seemingly unlikely of sources - my father - who had both albums dubbed on a single cassette tape that I found on a raid of his car, or stereo cabinet - I can't quite remember which. I raided my father's musical collections frequently, uncovering my love for The Police, Don Henley, and REM in the process. But the Tori amos discovery was a specifically precious gem that my father unknowingly gifted me with that cassette tape. 

Fast forward to now and Tori Amos is going to release 2-CD deluxe editions of those albums each newly remastered - although obviously it's more compelling that both will be released on vinyl for the first time ever along with a slew of b-sides and rarities. While this is all likely a guise for someone to be released from her record contract - hopefully this new chance to discover these two amazing albums will be a gift for someone of this generation as it was for me when I felt I was very much alone in something (and later realized I was certainly not alone at all). 

As Amos herself tells it, “Little Earthquakes was an acknowledgement of things that I hadn’t looked at in 15 years, in some cases… After you acknowledge something, you tell everybody, and other people say, ‘I know what that’s like, too.’ There’s this energy charge you get, and liberation from doing that.”