Never Was a Cornflake Girl: a classic Cream interview with Tori Amos
Tori Amos from a photo shoot for the ‘American Doll Posse’ album art.
This year, Tori Amos will release a new album In Times of Dragons out on May 1st – and she has just announced a global tour, too. It’s evident that you can’t keep a great artist down, especially one who has such wonderful relationships with what Tori calls her many ‘muses’ – not fixed people necessarily, but shifting sources of inspiration: mythological figures, important people in her personal life (including fans and survivors of abuse), and even aspects of her own mind (which, while often intangible, are as real as we will them to be).
Cream magazine digs into its archives to discover a classic chat with Tori, in which she waxes lyrical on the artistic process of creating music, how politics can sneak their way into a good song, and the blatant sexuality that is often expressed on the contemporary pop scene.
Interview by Antonino Tati
“Let’s face it, there are some dirty girls that aren’t being very smart lately. When they’re pouring out of expensive chauffeur-driven cars with their beavers exposed… falling out of their clothes… it’s not sexy. You have to wonder, why are you demeaning yourself? There’s a real difference between being desirable, and being desperate.”
At the time of designing the sleeve for Tori Amos’ 2001 album Strange Little Girls (the 25th anniversary issue of the album was just recently released), the artist was beginning to flirt with a change in image. Gone were the red tousled locks and muted hues of makeup that connoted a natural beauty of a bygone era and in their place was a palette of sharp, modern looks: rock chick Tori, desperate housewife Tori, couture Tori, even deputy sheriff Tori. The chameleon imagery went well with the record’s varied tracklisting: cover versions of classic songs all originally sung by men. Tori took to task the male of the rock species, picking up songs by Lennon and McCartney, Lou Reed, Neil Young, even Eminem, and making them seem like they were her own twisted ditties from scratch. Fans loved the ironic tributes. They also loved that their idol had injected a bit of colour into her wardrobe. Which is why American Doll Posse, Tori’s follow-up album, was certain to get followers excited while recruiting a whole new army of appreciators.
This time Tori would deliver twenty-three of her own original compositions, dividing them up to be sung amongst her self-initiated ‘posse’ of five female personalities. Some called it deluded. But to those who understand the complexities of Tori Amos as an artist and as a human being, and who also empathise with that desire to break away from the mediocrity of modern reality, American Doll Posse was the smartest path to take.
It’s clever, too, that the album’s title was a subliminal play on words: ‘American Idol’ and ‘pussy’ being the connotations the artist was going for.
The posse consisted of ‘Santa’ who has a passion for cocktail dresses, and aches for TGI Fridays. She’s the sort of girl who’d have her dry-cleaning delivered to the office at the end of the week so that she’s ready for dry martinis by 5pm; who Tori calls “the naughty one of the group”. Next up is ‘Pip’: a bit of a party girl, like Santa, but more street-smart than culturally-inclined and with a definite fetish for rubber. Then there’s ‘Clyde’ – nickname ‘Clitorides’: sassy, sexy, a little mad, but she won’t boil your bunny so long as you’re not giving all the attention to your other mistress. Fourth in the posse is ‘Isabel’: the one who keeps a sharp eye on the other girls. She knows her history and trusts her future, and she likes to record the here and now with her trusty SLR camera. And finally, there’s ‘Tori’, she who sticks around after the party is over to help collect the empty wine bottles, and who might just play a little something for you in private on the piano.
The posse were a potent fivesome that made the Spice Girls look like Barbie’s reject buddies. Each member took ‘turns’ singing on the album. And each ‘looked out’ for the other. The one thing they agreed on? That patriarchy is, like, really boring…
Hi Tori. I want to ask about your songwriting process. Do you write each of your songs in particular moments, or are they works in progress until complete?
It’s a mixture, really. My songs arrive not necessarily completely but in common segments. It’s hard to describe because it’s not a tangible thing. What usually happens is I play a few hours a day and within that experience I usually work myself into a frenzy. And then the compositions can come. Once I start to recognise how different the songs are, those are my light-bulb moments, and that might be days later.
You have written about everything from rape, to the negligence of presidents, but you’ve done so poetically and sometimes cryptically.
Some songs come to me because I have to confront where America is right now and where it is going. I have to confront what’s really behind the leadership, whoever the leader.
As you know, no matter who the president is – and it is important who that is, I’m not belittling that – but no matter who the president is, there is always a well organised right-wing Christian faction. One that doesn’t want equal rights for anybody but heterosexual men.
Therefore – and a lot of heterosexual men have real issues with this because it’s not their ideology – if you were going to combat this and take it on board, how do you do that? That same Christian right-wing is also still having an effect on women, even if they don’t realise it. Sometimes it’s very insidious. As a minister’s daughter, I see the emotional blackmail of that theology, even in advertising, and I find it incredibly evil and controlling. This goes back to those Catholic notions of truth; those stereotypes of the virgin and the whore. But, look, no matter who the president is, there is always a well-organised right-wing Christian faction, and you have to project an ideology that will not be too threatening to that right.
You think about politics and religion often?
Well, my father pushed me to study and if I hadn’t been a musician I would have gone into being a student of comparative religions. I’m fascinated by how people are controlled by the authority of each belief system. Now, in the US, women are having to combat this right-wing belief that if you’re sexual, you’re not sacred. And I’m coming after that. I stand for the mother god who is equal to the father god in all her glory. And I stand for all the myriad versions of the feminine that make up the complete picture.
Even in the raunchier songs on ‘American Doll Posse’, there is a certain sense of ‘don’t mess with me fellas or I’ll fuck you over’. Which one of the posse is singing ‘Teenage Hustling’?
That’s the girl in rubber. That’s Pip.
Well, I love Pip’s line in that song: ‘You’ve been skanking around with your talentless trash’. There are only a few songs in the history of music that feature the word ‘skanking’: yours, a song by Gwen Stefani, and a couple of hip-hop tracks.
Well, it’s an eerie word, really, and I can tell you even I was wearing rubber when I sang it. Lol. Five headstrong girls make up your ‘American Doll Posse’. There’s a kind of power in numbers at play there. Yes, but I also believe in the emancipation of the soul for each individual. Everybody has the right to consciousness, and everybody has the potential. But most leaders don’t want the masses to be conscious, because then we can’t be controlled any more. And I think the way their agendas get pushed through is when we become nations of sheep that can be led.
Through clever campaigning, diverting the attention of the masses, and so on?
Yes.
I’ve always suspected that – with New York being the capital of news, Hollywood being the heart of film, and Washington being the centre of politics – there’s a certain controlled dynamic going on. That when fields such as art and commerce look like swaying too much over to the ‘other’ side, the powers that be put into action ways to steer these back on track.
Yes, but there’s still that power in numbers. One voice takes it a little further, and another voice takes it even further, and I do think the art world – the written or the visual – is beginning to realise what this time is about. That this is a battle. But if we’re going to have a battle for people’s liberties and freedoms, we can’t fight with their weapons. We’ll never win. We must paint pictures that people want to walk into, realities that people want to step into, and say enough is enough; I don’t want to be controlled anymore by this ancient and oppressive way. And people have to want to make that choice. Sometimes you have to do all sorts of things, and sometimes you just have to seduce and make it delicious.
You have a knack of doing that yourself. Your lyrics are pretty cryptic, as if you’d like people to read into it what they want.
That’s the idea. I’m not saying to go and make a quote-unquote ‘political record’ but you have to decide what you believe in. We both know what happened in the late 1960s; the sonic poets did have an impact, and it looks like it’s occurring again. There are those who are choosing to speak up and speak out.
Ever the prolific artist, in 2026 Tori Amos is releasing her 18th studio album ‘In Times of Dragons’, announced a world tour, and has hit the singles charts with ‘Stronger Together’, a song that features her daughter, Tash – all fresh off the back of being listed in Spin Magazine’s ’40 Greatest Musicians of the Last 40 Years’ list (sitting pretty at number 6). Pretty good year, indeed.
Do you agree change is more possible today than in the ’60s, thanks largely to the internet? That the messages of marginal groups are more likely to leak through, where once upon a time these were heavily monitored?
You’re very right, but don’t think for a minute that [those in power] don’t know how to utilise the net.
Of course, but at the end of the day, isn’t it fair to say the ‘global village’ we’re now a part of allows for more of a diffusion of ideologies, or am I looking at things through rose-coloured lenses here?
No, I think you’re right about that. But there’s never enough diffusion of ethos. Here in the US, in [supposedly] the most democratic country in the world, many people still choose to support this old, patriarchal authority and agenda.
So, are artists wasting their time making statements, ambiguously or otherwise?
Not at all. There is a defiance to this. But it’s not going to go under the radar of the right-wing. It’s not meant to. At the same time, you don’t write a song like Yo George [a dig at George Bush that features on the American Doll Posse album] and think you’re going to be too cryptic. People would just ‘get’ who the bad guy is. Yes, and there are enough songs on my records for young women and men who don’t want to talk about that, if they have to come in at another angle.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney did that well on a lot of their records.
I always thought Lennon and McCartney were great with that. There were songs that would open a door to walk through, and then there would be a song that was a little more obvious about issues. I recognised that Lennon, in particular, was doing something that some people found offensive and other people found really enlightening.
Making too bold a statement could be a bad move. Some people suspect Lennon might still be around today if he hadn’t spoken so blatantly about certain issues; that perhaps he ought to have just kept playing ‘The Walrus’, if you know what I mean?
Well, this is a dangerous conversation, isn’t it? Because I would like to think I was closer to… a Lady Seal perhaps? As opposed to wearing that placard.
You’ve said in interview before that you “don’t mind a dirty girl”. Do you mean you don’t mind a dirty girl but she’s gotta have some smarts about her?
Yes, and let’s face it, there are some dirty girls that aren’t being very smart lately. When they’re pouring out of expensive chauffeur-driven cars with their beavers exposed… falling out of their clothes… it’s not sexy. You have to wonder, why are you demeaning yourself? There’s a real difference between being desirable, and being desperate. I do think women can take on judgement – projected judgement on them – and wear it like clothing. And there can be confusion on what is sensual and what is vulgar.
Like when a performer is pole-dancing. Some guys might think it’s all about the girl as object, showing them a good time, but really the girl’s making a buck, symbolically saying ‘I’ve got my pole here, boys, keep your distance when I want you to’.
Exactly. And frankly I think every woman should have her own pole. You nailed it when you said they become the object, as opposed to the subject, of the art form. Then it gets into the demeaning, the emotionally-defecating, and there we are: subservient again. It’s not about erotica anymore; it becomes about abuse and perversion. And that is not what I am about.
Tori Amos’ new album ‘In Times of Dragons‘ out on May 1st.
This interview appears in the anthology Conversations with Culture Icons (2025) by Cream magazine editor Antonino Tati.
A note to music bloggers and social influencers, feel free to lift quotes from this interview for use in your great clips and stories; we only ask that you credit Cream magazine as the quote source. Thank you.
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