Late Night OTB – Tori Amos
I’ve always been a huge fan of Tori Amos‘s voice and piano playing. I’m not always a fan of her songwriting, but off the top of my head I can’t think of a single cover she’s ever done that I haven’t enormously enjoyed. This cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” is a great case in point:
Lyrics:
Hey little girl is your daddy home
Did he go away and leave you all alone
I got a bad desire
I’m on fireTell me now baby is he good to you
Can he do to you the things that I do
I can take you higher
I’m on fireSometimes it’s like someone took a knife baby
edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley
through the middle of my soulAt night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
and a freight train running through the
middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire
I’m on fire
Great cover. I am a huge fan of Little Earthquakes, Under the Pink, and Boys for Pele. She is one of the few artists of the last 20 years with a large canon of EPs and singles, and those are loaded with covers and B-sides that contain much of her best work. I have probably a dozen of these, Winter and Cornflake Girl are among the best.
Thanks for the vid!
Good point about her songwriting. Her dirge-like cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is spooky and wonderful.
Jeff B, you Toriholic, is there a B-sides/EP collection for her yet? (Insert plug for Belle & Sebastian’s collection of EP’s on one album, Push Barman to Open Old Wounds — my favorite B&S album.)
Tori is great. I love a lot of her original music as well but she certainly does do a fantastic job with covers. I also agree with Jeff B that some of the EPs and single B-sides are some of her best stuff. I don’t think there is a straight B-side compilation yet but there are a fair number included in the box set she released recently if I remember correctly
In addition to how well she does covers I think it is also impressive how many different covers she performs live, particularly on her last tour. She had a portion of the show that she called Tori’s piano bar where she played a couple songs that had been requested by fans emailing her website. There was some duplication of these covers but there was also a suprising amount of variety. A while back I ran across a web site that had all of set lists from the tour and totals across the whole tour. Over something like 75 tour dates I think that there were over 80 songs that she only performed once (a few being her own, but most being covers). I think she did over 200 distinct songs (originals and covers) over the course of the tour.
She released 6 “official bootlegs” from that tour that have 12-13 covers across the six shows. I think they are all up on itunes.