Chris Booker: Why Strange Little Girls? What was the whole concept behind this album?
Tori Amos: I wanted to call it Suck Cock but they wouldn't let me.
Chris Booker: [laughs] I like that.
Tori Amos: My girls are my songs. I always call them girls.
Chris Booker: Do you really?
Tori Amos: Yeah, of course, and these are strange ones, so it just was handy that I was doing a song called "Strange Little Girl," kinda worked into the plan.
Chris Booker: How did you choose these songs?
Tori Amos: I had this little laboratory of men, we fondly called them that, and they were my control group and, you know, they would throw things and say things and it's how we really tried to flush out ideas. And they were very challenging, but I think we did our research.
Chris Booker: You are so pretty! [laughs] can't help it, looking at you, you're so adorable. I'm with Tori Amos, isn't that cool? This is the first video from her album. Tell me about this video.
Tori Amos: The video was really fun to make mainly because when you work with children on the set, um, being a mom now, you just, you have this appreciation for what children bring to a movie set. And this little girl in this video, Ellie, she just inspired everybody to try and remember what it was like to be little and the things you were afraid of and the things that, you know, you keep secret, that you don't tell anybody, but that may chase you until you're thirty years old because of those things that happened. And this is really what the video is, things that you've been afraid of that chase you and then when you look at them, then they get smaller. Yeah.
Chris Booker: Check it out, "Strange Little Girl" from Tori Amos
segment 2
Tori Amos: Best song by a female artist? Very difficult. I think we should go back in time umm, this is something that a lot of us can agree on and it's not the best, I don't think that's fair but it's potent and it's still potent. umm. Joni Mitchell, Blue, has resonated with a lot of us and Kate Bush, Hounds of Love. These were really ground-breaking records of their time.
Most memorable line of a song?
Tori Amos: It would have to be Chrissy [Hynde] -- "I shot my mouth off and you showed me what my hole was for."
segment 3
Chris Booker: Welcome to Links, Tori Amos.
Tori Amos: Booker.
Chris Booker: Thank You. We're talking about her cover album Strange Little Girls. 10cc's comin up, also Joe Jackson, both artists covered on this cd right here. You also covered Eminem's "Bonnie and Clyde" which I always thought was the most disturbing song in the world. Why did you choose this song to cover it? Where'd your motivation come from, the performance you put on the record for this?
Tori Amos: When I heard it, it was really clear that she didn't have a voice. You know, that wasn't his intention to give her one. He aligned with his character and his version's very strong. But she reached out of that trunk and grabbed my hand and said, "I'm hearing this slightly differently than he is, maybe you should come take a listen."
Chris Booker: It's scary, the song actually scares me, your version. Like I said, I always thought his was disturbing, but yours is just, it just, I remember vividly the first time listening to it I'm like, woah. It like, gets in your skin and you're like, eww. It's creepy.
Tori Amos: Well, it is scary.
Chris Booker: Yeah, that creepy side. It's hard for me to hear it come out of you and it's like you're kinda transformed into... the album, different characters and stuff. I guess that was probably your plan. I guess it worked, Tori.
Tori Amos: Well, you know, I think that she's the one person who isn't dancing, and you're sitting there with your throat slit and you're hearing your ex-husband or whatever he is, telling your daughter all sorts of stuff and making her an accomplice, which this woman thought that that was occurring. Then maybe it just cuts you in a place here [stomach] where you know your daughter will grow up to be a very strange girl and divided and you can't protect her. So yeah, it's very scary.
Chris Booker: Well, thanks for the story. Another artist she covered on her CD, Boomtown Rats, this is "I Don't Like Mondays."
