from in the shadow she calls and in the
shadow she finds a way finds a way and in the shadow she CRAWLS clutching her
faded photograph my image UNDER her thumb yes with a message for my heart yes
with a message for my heart she's been everybody else's girl maybe one day
she'll be her own everybody else's girl maybe one day she'll be her own and
in the doorway they stay and laugh as violins fill with water screams from the
BLUEBELLS can't make them go away well I'm not seventeen but I've cuts on my
knees falling down as the winter takes one more CHERRY TREE rushin' rivers
thread so thin limitation dreams with the flying pigs turbid blue and the
drugstores too safe in their coats anda in their do's yeah smother in our hearts a pillow to my dots one day maybe one day one day she'll be her own and in the mist there she rides and castles are burning in my heart and as I twist I hold tight and I ride to work every morning wondering why sit in the chair and be good now and become all that they told you the white coats enter her room and I'm callin' my baby callin' my baby callin' my baby callin' everybody else's girl maybe one day she'll be her own...
Tori Quotes
Now, I don't want to say that electronic instruments are anything bad. For example: the electronic arrangement for "Girl" is mine. Eric made the sounds on the Kurzweil and programmed everything, since I don't have a clue. [Keyboards (Germany) - June 1992]
The beginnings were composed on an old upright piano in Virginia [at her parents' farm]. It's horribly out of tune, which is one of the things I love about it. The chorus was written but that's about it. I threw it down on tape and forgot about it. Months later, I was cleaning the house (truly a happening) and was throwing tapes away. Eric intercepted this one out of a pile. I was chopping onions in the kitchen, he brought it in and said, "Listen" -- I did. [Little Earthquakes songbook]
It's not an aggressive fight. It's an internal fight, that when you need other people's approval, when you walk in a room, you're everybody's -- or anybody's -- girl. When you don't need that anymore, [it's] because you have an understanding and an agreement with yourself on who you want to be. And when I say "who you want to be," that's going to evolve. But at least you've got to get your palette, your paint, your canvas, and say, "I'm not choosing to tell this story, which is doing anything to have success." I don't want that kind of success.
["Girl"] was being clear with myself that I didn't want that. Didn't need that. Because what I was achieving really hadn't been done in that way, because folk women were being embraced. There was a style for them. But straddling the piano and making the piano a viable instrument with songs being built around it, that was gone since the Carole King days. This was a very different thing because this wasn't the blues/R&B approach. And Kate Bush was much more electronica. And so, I knew then, that I had a big fight ahead of me. And that I couldn't be anybody's; I had to be my own. [Rolling Stone - December 18, 2009]
Live Versions
"Girl"
December 15, 1991 - London, England Bob Harris In Session
"Girl"
August 16, 1992 - West Palm Beach, Florida
"Girl"
October 23, 1996 - Miami, Florida
"Girl"
October 1, 2009 - Milan, Italy
"Girl"
August 23, 2014 - Orlando, Florida
"Girl"
December 1, 2017 - Los Angeles, California
"Girl"
July 17, 2023 - Morrison, Colorado
t o r i p h o r i a tori amos digital archive yessaid.com
