Visiting the Choirgirl Hotel: Tori Amos’s 1998 Electric Infused Album Continues Her Confessional Style in One of Her Most Dark & Emotive Ways Yet.
Tori Amos’s career started with her unabashed confessional songwriting. She’s never afraid to take on hard-hitting topics like rape, Christianity, suicide, female masturbation, and sexuality.
Coming off of her 1996 baroque-infused Boys for Pele, Amos suffered her first in a string of miscarriages. The pain of loss over the child she so desperately wanted would change the trajectory of the follow-up project to Pele.
Little by little, the songs would come together. One of the first songs that she wrote for the album would be the first single off the album, “Spark.” Choirgirl is a complete sonic departure from what Boys for Pele brought to the table. Gone are the harpsichords and horns, and in are keyboards, drum programming, and thicker electric guitars. The “Song Girls,” as Amos describes her songs, are wrapped around loss, anger, and disappointment. You get a palpable feeling for Tori's angst over this loss of life she is trying to create.
Amos told the New York Post this about the making of the record in 1998:
“I was pregnant and I miscarried at almost three months last Christmas. But people thought that was a subtext to the record, and they were getting this so wrong that I decided to talk about it. I just wanted to really have the pregnancy and not rush into doing more music, but when the miscarriage happened, the songs just started to come. I went through many different stages. I couldn’t be the person I was before I carried life, but I’m not a mother, so I was in no man’s land. But there was still a deep connection to this being; the soul and the love doesn’t go. This record is about life force.”
Stylistically, she dives more into alternative rock, trip-hop, and some club influences on this record. Much like her prior bodies of work, this album is worthy of a listen from front to back. It comes in shorter than the prior album, at only 12 tracks.
I would suggest looking into some of her live performances during her 1998 Plugged tour, as she comes off like a raging flame dually welding her Bösendorfer and Kurzwell keyboard with long-time bandmate Steve Caton, John Evans, and Matt Chamberlain. As one of the highlights in her catalog, I want to thoroughly review each track on this record.
Grab your luggage and check in at the front desk of the choirgirl hotel:
“Spark” opens the album off with Amos feeling hollow in the wake of her miscarriage. The track strikes you with Tori’s sampled guitar tones on her keyboard. The title references that spark of life that she felt within her when she was pregnant.
She tells Q magazine in 1998 this on her miscarriage:
“I got pregnant on tour, it was a surprise, but I was deeply thrilled about it. I was almost three months pregnant… Christmas ‘96… and I miscarried. And it was very difficult. The sorrow was just really deep. I know some people who’ve gone through it and they move on quickly. Everybody responds differently to a loss. I got quite attached to the spirit of this being?”
The opening of the track alludes to this moment of loss and wondering if you’re still pregnant, “She’s addicted to nicotine patches/ She’s addicted to nicotine patches/ She’s afraid of a light in the dark/ 6:58 are you sure where my spark is/ Here, here, here.”
She goes into how much this loss affected her in her Q interview:
“It took over, I think, the way I…. y’know, once you’ve felt life in your body, you can’t go back to having been a woman that’s never carried life. The other thing is feeling something dying inside you and you’re still alive. Obviously when it was happening, it was already over but in your mind, you don’t know that yet. You’re doing anything, thinking, Oh God maybe if I put a cork up myself, maybe it’ll keep this little life in. That’s why in ‘Spark’, I say, ‘She’s convinced she could hold back a glacier / But she couldn’t keep a baby alive.’ You just start going insane. There’s nothing you can do, so you surrender and then… start again.”
She very vividly paints how devastating feeling the loss of this life within her was and how powerless this made her feel, “She’s convinced she could hold back a glacier/ But she couldn’t keep baby alive/ Doubting if there’s a woman in there somewhere/ Here, here, here.”
It then shifts over towards the anger she has towards God overtaking her ability to hold life away from her, “If the divine master plan is perfection/ Maybe next I’ll give Judas a try/ Trusting my soul to the ice cream assassin/ Here, here, here.” The words' raw emotion and candid nature place you right there in the moment of Tori’s mind during this time in her life. There is also this duality in the chorus over playing off this miscarriage and losing hope in living, “You say you don’t want it again and again/ But you don’t, don’t really mean it/ You say you don’t want it, this circus we’re in/ But you don’t, don’t really mean it/ You don’t, don’t really mean it.” Amos’s honesty on a subject that isn’t discussed is commendable and brutal. Rarely do we get an in-depth look at what miscarriage does to women.
The music video was shot in England and shows a woman running from her kidnapper as she traverses the woods to get help and ultimately gets none. It’s definitely one of my favorites in her catalog of music videos and is a must-watch.
“Cruel” would be split second single release with “Raspberry Swirl” in the United States. It continues this moody, dark, and liquid sound that proliferates throughout the record.
In a 1998 interview, Amos had this to say about the synthesis of the track:
“Each song would show me a certain side of herself because of what I was going through. So a song like ‘Cruel’ came to me out of my anger.”
The anger doesn’t so much as bite as it seethes throughout the track in this flowing mixture of trip-hop and alt-rock sounds. Off the top, she’s not having the pleasantries and pomp and circumstance that this person is giving to her, “So don’t give me respect/ Don’t give me a piece of your preciousness/ Flaunt all she’s got in our old neighborhood/ I’m sure she’ll make a few friends/ Even the rain bows down/ Let us pray as you cock, cock, cock your mane/ No cigarettes only, peeled Havanas for you.”
She then bitterly speaks about this person’s pride and sense of power as she snaps herself out of his pull, “Dance with the Sufis/ Celebrate your top ten in the charts of pain/ Lover, brother, bougainvillea/ My vine twists around your need/ Even the rain is sharp like today/ As you sh- sh- shock me sane/ No cigarettes only, peeled Havanas for you.”
This all culminates in Tori wondering why she’s prone to lash out and why can’t she keep things afloat, “I can be cruel, I don’t know why/ Why can’t my ba.ll.oo.n stay up in a perfectly windy sky?/ I can be cruel, I don’t know why/ I don’t know why.” The angst in this song still has an edge of sensuality to it, something Amos can do effortlessly in her work. The live version of the track on the follow-up album, “To Venus and Back,” erupts into this static of palpable rage in its 7 minutes of play.
“Black-Dove (January)” blends in the haunting mallet piano tone from Tori’s keyboard and her piano playing with a heavier alt-rock sound.
Amos told Die Zeit [Germany] in 1999 about the nightmares that surrounded the making of this song:
“When I sleep I often have nightmares… Just like the one I’m describing in the song ‘Black-Dove’ off my last album From the Choirgirl Hotel. I see a black dove. I see its face clearly. The dove is transparent. Like it is made of ice. I can see my hand through it. An auger goes through it and it is bleeding water. To get the same atmosphere musically, I had to describe a scene of the movie Fargo to my musicians. A car is coming towards the camera from a long distance, very slowly. You know it will arrive in a moment. But you hope that this will never happen. My nightmares are so bad, that I mostly reject it when my friends want to take me to a cinema to watch a horror movie… The nightmares have agonized me since my childhood. I am the daughter of a Methodist preacher and as a child I was sexually abused by a friend of the family. I think the nightmares are telling me things about me I need to know. And I try to understand what they mean. Maybe so I can get to know something more about my soul.”
The song opens with the woman holding in all the terror she feels from the others around her, “She was a January girl/ She never let on how insane it was/ In that tiny kinda scary house/ By the woods.” We then get the imagery of this black dove, a more malevolent form of the traditionally peaceful symbology, “Black-dove black-dove/ You’re not a helicopter/ You’re not a cop-out either.” She tells herself that she may not be able to do it all, but she’s not a quitter either. Through this darkness, she garners strength in her past experiences that the forces that are against her don’t know she has, “Black-dove black-dove/ You don’t need a space ship/ They don’t know you’ve already lived/ On the other side of the galaxy.”
This theme of courage turning to cowardice is explored in the song’s second verse, “She had a January world/ So many storms not right somehow/ How a lion becomes a mouse/ By the woods.” This solemn nature is exploded out from in each chorus, much like Tori is trying to do from her own demons.
“Raspberry Swirl” is the most club-oriented track on the record. It’s heavy and apposing in nature with its manic keys and drums. The remix, the Lip Gloss Version, would take this drum beat to the limit on mania and be used in the promotional video for the track and played live during the Plugged tour in 1998.
The time of the song is a clever reference to female sexual satisfaction. The aggression behind this track is pushed towards these men who only see women as objects. She opens with the lines, “I am not señorita / I am not from your tribe / In the garden I did no crime,” which clearly aims at traditionally Christian-minded men who aim to control women.
She’s not subscribing to your doctrine and is not being persecuted for her wants and needs. She continues on to let the men know, “I am not your señorita/ I am not from your tribe / If you want inside her well / Boy you better make her raspberry swirl.” She’s making the statement that in your want to get off, you better get her off first.
The song then gets a bit more aggressive in its frantic dance/alt tone with Amos singing, “Things are getting desperate/ When all the boys can’t be men / Everybody knows I’m her friend/ Everybody knows I’m her man.” She’s caustically poking at all the men that devolve into boys when they can’t have their sexual way with a woman.
Tori is here to say she’s more her man than he will ever be. The music video to the track is a surreal story in this dance club/gallery setting. It’s quite interesting to watch.
“Jackie’s Strength” is one of the beautiful ballads off the record. It’s a breathtakingly lush mix of strings and Amos’s expert piano playing. As the title shows, the song calls on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, first wife to president John F. Kennedy.
The tragic assassination of her husband is called on in the song’s opening lines, “A Bouvier till her wedding day/ Shots rang out the police came/ Mama laid me on the front lawn/ And prayed for Jackie’s strength.” Here, as a very small child, Tori’s mother prays to Jackie to have strength in such a bleak and sickening moment. She then moves on to her early adulthood as she prepares to get married, “Feeling old by twenty-one/ Never thought my day would come/ My bridesmaid’s getting laid/ I pray for Jackie’s strength.”
You can feel the uncertainty in Amos on this day about the man she is planning to marry. This foreshadowing is shown in the song’s chorus as this man is clearly not what he seems and is much darker in character, “Make me laugh, say you know what you want/ You said we were the real thing/ So I show you some more and I learn/ What black magic can do.” She alludes to also not being true to herself in her own life and how hollow this made her, “Sleepovers, Beene’s got some pot/ You’re only popular with anorexia/ So I turn myself inside out/ In hope someone will see, will see.” She ends by revisiting the song’s opening lines. The notion of Camelot, the name of the Kennedy estate, is touched on as being much less of a fairytale (lies and cheating).
Through all this chaos, Tori prays for Jackie’s strength to make the right decision in this moment, “I got lost on my wedding day/ Typical, the police came, oh/ But virgins always get backstage/ No matter what they’ve got so say/ If you love enough you’ll lie a lot/ Guess they did in Camelot/ Mama’s waiting on my front lawn/ I pray, I pray/ I said I pray for Jackie’s strength, strength.”
The music video does a beautiful job following Tori on this day as she ultimately chooses to leave this man and be true to herself and her happiness.
“Iieee” would become a fan favorite among Tori listeners. This is one of the album's richest mixes of electronics and alt-rock. The focus of this song is loss.
Tori provides this insight from her EPK on the album:
“‘Iieee’ [pronounced eye eye ee] has a Native American influence in it, when you hear the rhythm. And yet, there’s a little of that New Mexican, driving in an old dilapidated Mustang, and you’re just on your own, and you drive for days and days and days, and you think you’re at the end of the earth, and it’s just you. And I think that feeling… ‘iieee’ is very much about dying and about sacrifices.”
The song opens with this sultry blend of drums, guitar, bass, and synth strings. The opening verse hints at loss through the lines, “Is it God’s / Is it yours / Sweet saliva.” You get the feeling of wondering if you still have this life or is it lost to you.
The chorus erupts back into this lush string tone where Amos knows this relationship is burning out. She’s begging for this demise to be graceful, “I know we’re dying / And there’s no sign of a parachute / We scream in cathedrals / Why can’t it be beautiful / Why does there gotta be a sacrifice”. The B portion of the song turns up the fire with guitar as Tori continues to bargain with this person whose really to torch everything to just let things die out peacefully, “Just say yes / You little arsonist / You’re so sure you can save / Every hair on my chest / Just say yes / You little arsonist.”
We then end with the same request to disavow this sacrifice that must be made between them in this end, “Well I know we’re dying / And there’s no sign of a parachute / In this chapel little chapel of love / Can’t we get a little grace / And some elegance / No we scream in cathedrals / Why can’t it be beautiful / Why does there gotta be a sacrifice.”
The live version played during the Plugged tour adds an additional bridge between the last chorus and then repeats that chorus again. Here, it is very clear that Tori is grinding her teeth over the disdain she has over the miscarriage of her daughter:
“I know you understand
understand the way I feel
you shove it, you shove it
in my faceI know you understand
the way I feel, but
you took, you took
my little girlI know you understand
the way I feel, don’t you
if you understand,
understand the way
well then, why
then why
iieee…”
It honestly makes the song that much more intense and tragically beautiful. The video below from the Session at West 54th performance includes this additional section.
“Liquid Diamonds” is the most trip-hop-influenced track on the entire album. The track is milky and fluid in its movements. The drums and bass add to this fluidity as Amos plays this sultry piano over these sounds.
Tori has said that water played an important role in creating the songs on this album and her own healing process from loss. This track provides a bit of healing as it sees her picking up her pieces and becoming whole again.
We open with her surrendering her feelings and then moving forward from it, “Surrender./ Then start you engines/ You’ll know quite./ Soon what my mistake was”. It then goes into how forgiving yourself can be a slow process, “I hear she./ Still grants forgivenesss/ Although I./ Willingly forgot her/ The offe… ring is molasses.”
The chorus compares Amos to liquid flowing. This brings to mind the idea of being malleable and able to move with where things take you, “ I guess I’m an underwater thing, I’m/ Liquid running/ There’s a sea secret in me/ It’s plain to see/ I-It is rising/ But I must be flowing/ Li… quid diamonds”.
She then goes to pull herself back together, taking the sides of her that have ran off and absorbing them back into her being, “Calling for my soul/ A-At the corners of the world/ I know she’s playing poker/ With the rest of the stragglers.”
The second verse seems to point to the fact that she could be all alone and falling apart, but she’s fluid and can fit through the cracks and come back together, “And if your./ Friends don’t come back to you
And you./ Know this is madness/ A lilac./ Mess in your prom dress/ And you say./ I guess I’m an underwater thing so I guess I can’t take it personally.”
This song is very smooth and pulls like tides throughout the track. Its darker tone is quite beautiful, like dark blues and purples lighting up the darkness.
“She’s Your Cocaine” is much more acidic in its anger. Tori provides this insight into the song from her Modern Rock Live performance in 1998:
“These women…They’re reptilian. But these girls, they’re takers. And guys don’t see it because they don’t sit there… They do their killing… Say we’re eating dinner, right, and one of these girls is at the table and there’s a big party of us. Some of these guys are going, ‘Isn’t she the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen?’ and you’re going, ‘She just murdered the girl next to you. The girl you brought is like a walking corpse because of this other girl…’ Like, over the head. They don’t even get these slime walking… These women try to get in and act like they’re your friend… And so they find out all your secrets, they find out everything and then they go to your man or to your other friends and just completely ruin your relationships with them. I’m telling you, they are Lucifer. Lucifer with boobs.”
This is one of the most unhinged tracks on the album. Amos spits venom throughout the song as these striking electric guitar sounds crackle onward. Amos immediately calls out this man’s relationship as an addiction. This woman he’s with is emasculating him, “She’s your cocaine / She’s got you shaving your legs / You can suck anything / But you know you want to be me.”
She then calls out how toxic and controlling this woman is to him, “She says control it / Then she says don’t control it / Then she says you’re controlling / The way she makes you crawl.”
He can’t do anything right for her, but he’s still on hands and knees to serve her. The bridge cools down with just synth flutes behind Tori as she sings, “If you want me to boy I could lie to you / You don’t need one of these to let me inside of you / And is it true that devils end up like you / Something safe for the picture frame / And is it true that devils end up like you / So tied up you don’t know how she came.
Amos tries to tell him that she could lie and say that she’s perfect for him, or she could be truthful and say this woman is far too toxic for him. As a call back to the Modern Rock Live quote, she asks if this demon ends up like this antagonistic woman (something pretty on the outside). My favorite lines in the song come in at the end, “And I’m writing good checks / You sign Prince of Darkness / Try squire of dimness / Please don’t help me with this.” Tori wants to let this woman know she’s not as powerful and all that as she puts herself off to be.
“Northern Lad” is the second ballad on the album. Here, Amos discusses a relationship that appears to be unfulfilling and figuring out its time to end it. She opens the song sort of reminiscing on the best parts of this man she was with, “Had a northern lad / Not exactly had / He moved like the sunset god who painted that / First he loved my accent / How his knees could bent / I thought we’d be okay / Me and my molasses.” The song then shifts towards the notion that things just aren’t working out, “But I feel something is wrong / But I feel this cake just isn’t done.”
The second verse takes a colder view of him as he’s distant and seemingly unloving, “You don’t show much these days / It get’s so fuckin cold / I loved his secret places / But I can’t go anymore. “ Tori even nods at her prior criticism over her piano usage in her music with the line, “Well, I guess you go too far when pianos try to be guitars.” In the chorus, Amos speaks about how the relationship's passion is all gone. She tells others you have to know when you can’t continue with the relationship, “Girls you’ve got to know / When it’s time to turn the page / When your only wet, because of the rain / Because of the rain.”
“Hotel” takes on on a wild ride through heavy electronic tones and aggressive guitar work. We get a few moments of reprieve where Tori’s piano provides an anchor of stability through these dark and cold tones. The song seems to point toward a relationship with a man whose a rising star that appears to be toxic as this man is falling apart.
As Tori has had prior connections to Nine Inch Nails leader Trent Reznor, there are a few parallels in the lyrics and how their relationship turned out. She begins the song discussing this almost secretive relationship as they meet in a hotel. She even jabs at him as this lollipop Gestapo (some unthreatening threatening force), “Met’em in a hotel / Met’em in a hotel beneath ground / Tell me that he’s missing / Tell me this is one for Lollipop Gestapo.”
She continues in the second verse to point towards his rising star status, “You say he’s the biggest thing / There’ll be this year / I guess that what I’m seeking / I guess that what I’m seeking isn’t here.” It appears the need she seeks to fill is not coming from this man. This is a bit of malice to the line, “You were wild where are you now,” which gives mind to him burning out.
The song rises to a fevered pitch in the chorus as Tori swells, “Give me more!”. She wants more than what this man can give; as such, she has to move on and be.
Playboy Mommy” is a different take on miscarriage. Here, the song is much more solemn in nature compared to the biting “Spark.” When asked about the gender of the baby she miscarried in Q magazine, Amos provided this insight into the song:
“It was a girl. That’s why on Playboy Mommy, I sing, ‘Don’t judge me so harsh, little girl.’ I had so many responses to it before I could get to the place where I am now. You see people hit their kids in stores and you just go, What force of judgment gives these people these little lives? I have a lot of questions right now…I know now that I have an appreciation for the miracle of life that I didn’t have, but I don’t believe in the saying that it all happens for the best… it’s just not appropriate.”
She opens the song talking about the loss of her baby. She feels the spirit of this child didn’t choose her for who she was, “Then the baby came before I found/ The magic how to keep her happy/ I never was the fantasy/ Of what you want to be wanted me to be.”
She both mourns and asks the essence of this child to be kind to her as her reputation will guide her home, “Don’t judge me so harsh little girl/ So you got a playboy mommy/ But when you tell them my name and/ You want to cross that bridge all on your own/ Little girl they’ll do you no harm/ ’Cause they know your playboy mommy.”
The second verse bites the hardest. Amos appears to blame herself for not being able to be there for this forming child when she needed her. The last lines dig the deepest as Tori states that nothing can take the place of the love she has for this child, “ never was there, was there when it counts/ I get my way you’re so like me/ You seemed ashamed, ashamed that I was/ A good friend to American soldiers/ I’ll say it loud here by your grave/ Those angels can’t ever take my place.”
The ending of the song sees Amos wishing this spirit a safe journey and that one day she will be there with her to hold her and keep her safe, “You cross that bridge all on your own/ Little girl they’ll do you no harm/ ’Cause they know your playboy mommy/ I’m coming home to you/ To take you in my arms.”
The mournful synth saxophones, slide guitar, and Tori’s piano make this song so striking and sad. It’s one of the best off the album and conveys so many emotions throughout that you can’t help but ache for her.
“Pandora’s Aquarium” is the final song on the album. Tori takes on a more lounge jazz sound with this track that works beautifully here. It provides a bit of brightness to the dark tone, like a star in the night sky.
Amos told The Inside Connection this on the song’s genesis:
“Well all in all about, I started writing right after I miscarried, and I miscarried on December 23, 1996, which obviously, the angel was on the tree and the whole bit. So soon after that the songs started to come, thank God. And ‘Pandora’ was the first one to come, not in her entirety, but she started to come. She came off the water. I was staying on the river, and the water was a large part of this record. I would spend hours on the water and seeing how the sea transformed itself, knowing that I had to transform myself from a woman who had lost a baby to a woman who was grieving, to a woman who had to find joy in life again. So the songs began, I guess you could say, early January and the album was finished in February of 1998, ready to be re-mastered.”
The notion of Pandora brings in the idea of letting out all of the world’s sorrows, which Amos must have felt from her miscarriage. There is also the strength that comes bubbling up from the depths in this song. S
he lets the listener know she’s not tethered to the underworld like Persephone, “I am not asking you to believe in me/ Boy I think you’re confused I’m not Persephone/ Foam can be dangerous with tape across my mouth/These things you do I never asked you how.”
She also states that all this fury and rage can be dangerous to not let out. The song changes keys as she lets herself know that she’s still very much a woman and a woman able to be a mother and conceive, “Stare but I can taste you’re still alive below the waste/ Ripples come and ripples go/ Then ripple back to me, come on/ Back to me.” The strength she pulls into herself through this song is a great way to end off this darker and more aggressive album.
This album continues to be my favorite out of her catalog. Tori pours out so much emotion on this album that I feel numerous people can connect with her beyond the subject matter discussed in this review.
As always, I commend the candid nature in which Amos spills her losses and personal turmoil. It is no wonder why she has such a dedicated fanbase to this day, as her music always feels like a very personal conversation with a dear friend.
Tori’s 90s catalog is some of the best to listen to from her entire offering. She would continue experimenting with this electronic sound on the follow-up album To Venus and Back, which came out the following year. Personally, I feel this album is great from start to finish, but as an objective listener, here are some of the best tracks off the album:
- “Spark”
- “Raspberry Swirl”
- “Jackie’s Strength”
- “Iieee”
- “Playboy Mommy”
- “Pandora’s Aquarium”
My overall rating: is 10 out of 10 rooms at the Choirgirl Hotel…
Reviews and Podcast to Check Out:
Drive All Night — Songs of Tori Amos Podcast:
Eric Mason’s Review and Analysis of From the Choirgirl Hotel:
Sources:
