Tori Amos - from the choirgirl hotel

[liner notes]

lyrics, quotes & videos

1. Spark
2. Cruel
3. Black-Dove (January)
4. Raspberry Swirl
5. Jackie's Strength
6. i i e e e
7. Liquid Diamonds
8. She's Your Cocaine
9. Northern Lad
10. Hotel
11. Playboy Mommy
12. Pandora's Aquarium

B-Sides

Merman (free with album pre-order)
Purple People
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (Christmas in Space)
Bachelorette
Do It Again (Steely Dan)
Cooling
Never Seen Blue
Beulah Land

Tori's fourth solo album, from the choirgirl hotel, was released on May 4, 1998 (UK) and May 5, 1998 (US). from the choirgirl hotel was recorded in 1997-1998 at Mark Hawley's new studio, Martian Engineering, in Cornwall, England. The album debuted at number 5 on Billboard's Top Album Sales Chart, selling 153,000 copies its first week.

Tori talks about from the choirgirl hotel

"I got pregnant at the end of the last tour, it wasn't planned, but I was very ready at that point in my life to be a mother. Then, when I miscarried, the music just started to come. You know when you have this emptiness - internally, literally - your hormones are crashing and everything is happening? When I'm in some kind of trauma, the songs usually tear across the universe to find me. I have a really good relationship with the Muse, and she usually comes and brings a lot of girls with her also, and they started to really pull me out of it. So although I couldn't create on a human level, I was able to create as a musician." [Mojo - May 1998]

"In the album art, there's a map. The Choirgirl Hotel, in my brain, is very near this map, and you can see in the right-hand corner, it says, "last stop before the CGH," which is the Choirgirl Hotel, of course. The choirgirl hotel is metaphorical. It's the idea that these girls, the song girls, live in this space and sometimes they let me come and visit and sometimes they don't. They're real persnickety. I feel like they're very independent. Whereas each record has it's own little story and family tree, this one was very much about... I swear to God, I could see some of these girls having margaritas together out by the pool, just saying hi to me as I walked by, you know? It's like, oh yeah, there's 'Jackie's Strength,' hanging out by the pool side (laughs). So I saw them as very independent, but I saw them as a singing group, and that's why I put them in a space that lives nowhere that I've ever been." [MTV News - 1998]

[more Tori Amos quotes about from the choirgirl hotel]

from the choirgirl hotel magazine ad
from Billboard magazine (US), April 25, 1998

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