So, Tori Amos has kindly released three singles from her upcoming album, In Times of Dragons. You have to decode Torispeak in a way to understand the official explanation for this concept album, but the general vibe seems to be “rich men are nightmares, ladies, am i rite?”
In her second single, she quotes Peter Thiel: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible”in the voice of the billionaire antagonist of the album. This line is part of the track “Shush,” which you can listen to under the cut.
The second single, “Shush” seems to lay out the thematic elements of the album: billionaire predatory men. It’s seems to be a screed against the Epstein class, particularly with the Peter Thiel quote
“Shush” is the first track on the album and sets the tone.
The other important thing about “Shush” is that includes the following lyrics:
Am I just meat?
Can I live through this?
Can I live through this?
Courtney, thank you
This brings to an end a public 30 year feud between Tori Amos and Courtney Love and Courtney responded to the olive branch on social media, saying “It’s a great song. Made me blush. 🤍✨” which is a Big Deal since Courtney said a shit ton of terrible things about Tori (allegedly) back in the 90s and Tori fired back with her music (allegedly), namely “Professional Widow” and “She’s Your Cocaine,” the latter being about both Courtney and Trent Reznor. “Caught a Lite Sneeze” is about Trent Reznor as well, and the whole feud seems to stem from a situationship Tori had with Trent that got ended when Courtney toured with Trent. We don’t know the details, the speculation is everywhere, Tori has claimed Professional Widow isn’t about Courtney, but if you were there, it felt pretty obvious. To be fair, I think PW is about multiple things but the title of the song never appears once in the lyrics so it definitely seems like the name was a straight up dig. Either way, 90s queens reign together! imo “Shush” is the best song I’ve heard from Tori since 2018’s “Bang.”
We gotta go to old internet to get the possible tea on this one. So be ready for some oldass sources from weird sites that are a bit on the sketchy side. Tori has always denied Professional Widow was about Courtney, but she also never really hid her disdain back in the day:
In the version of Professional Widow that appeared on Amos’s third solo album – as opposed to Armand Van Helden’s remix – Amos appeared to be attacking another of her key contemporaries, Courtney Love. Since then, the singer had fiercely denied that Love was her target in the song. Lines like “Don’t blow your brains yet / We gotta be big boy” are fairly unequivocal, though.
“Let’s put it this way,” she hedges daintily, “Courtney and I have never spoken. We’ve never spoken about it and we’ve never spoken and I think it’s best kept that way. We have mutual friends. I don’t want to put them in a bad position.”
Tori has been asked about her feud with Courtney for a very long time, here’s an interview Q&A from 2004:
How did you feel about Courtney Love losing custody of her daughter?
When I heard the news, I cried. For a moment. I didn’t weep buckets, but c’mon, it was a moment. Any time a woman has a child taken away from them, it’s a deep pain, no matter what chaos they’ve caused. Y’know the music industry is not a place where I’ve found a supportive sisterhood. I’ve found there are many guy’s gals, many women that will cut you dead before they’ll give you a bell, or send a warm message to you, who would sooner cut your clit out. There’s not a lot of compassion. A very competitive industry. I have a lot of acquaintances in the industry and unfortunately the male acquaintances are a lot more genuinely supportive. My women friends, a lot of them are painters, writers, not a lot of musicians, and that’s been disappointing. There was a time, especially when Courtney and I were starting to get played on radio, they’d be playing one woman and that was enough. So you were competing for one slot. They pit you against each other, they just do, it’s not the same way with men. Now it’s opened up a little bit, there’s more exposure.
Courtney is directly quoted as saying this about Tori’s cover of Nirvana:
Courtney had this to say about Tori’s cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”:
“I know ‘Cornflake Girl’ (OP Note: Cornflake Girl is not about Courtney at all lol it’s about FGM) and ‘Professional Widow’ (Is that supposed to be about me? I’ve never figured it out.) are supposed to be big classics but it doesn’t resonate … Kurt thought her ‘Teen Spirit’ was HYSTERICAL in a joke song sort of way but now I see it as rather sad, and I guess mournful, which was the point, we just thought it was really funny.”
Some sources have a lot more harsh quotes from Courtney on Tori’s Nirvana cover. There’s more vague lore that may or may not be urban legend around the Courtney/Tori/Trent saga, including a very amusing website that is on Tripod that seems to be collecting all the 90s music goss, including these gems:
02) Tori releases her third album, Boys For Pele. And boy is she pissed. The CD jacket features images of her victorious over the pigs, clearly a kiss-off to NIN songs like “Last” (“pigs we get what pigs deserve”), “Piggy” and “March of the Pigs.” The leadoff single, “Caught A Lite Sneeze”, has another direct kiss-off: the lyric “made my own Pretty Hate Machine” (1989 NIN debut album). The follow-up single “Professional Widow” has lyrics that seem to deal with Trent choosing the idiotic and slutty Courtney (OP Note: NOT MY WORDS THIS WAS THE 90S I AGREE WHAT A SHITTY WAY TO DESCRIBE COURTNEY) over her, Tori proclaiming her a “starfucker” (Eric, Kurt, Billy, Trent…). Tori’s lyric “Little Amsterdam in a southern town” from that album’s “Little Amsterdam” could also refer to Trent if you’re a creative thinker. For the tour she covers NIN favorite “Hurt”, shortening the song to a minute and giving it light hearted, silly lyrics like “I hurt myself today to find a jelly bean.”
03) Trent says that Courtney Love meddled in his relationship with Tori and this drifted their friendship apart.
The veracity of this website, I cannot account for, nor can I account for a lot of this feud with concrete evidence. Nor can I hard vouch for the veracity of the next quote, but it IS the one that has been embraced by fans for 30 years as urban legend if nothing else, and well, kinda sounds like believable enough from 90s Courtney, but I cannot say if it is true or not:
“The only connection that can really be said to be solidly known between Courtney Love and Tori is a comment love made around the same era. Love said, rather cruelly, that the reason her late husband Kurt Cobain committed suicide was because of “‘that awful cover that Tori Amos did.'” (OP Note: these websites are sketchy, but they are authentic 90s/00s websites from Tori Amos superfans who beat Swifties by several decades in being ultra parasocial and watching her every move– or sound, to quote a Tori lyric) so while I cannot vouch for the accuracy, I do think these people believed them fully when they made these webbed sites.
As for the first single released, “Stronger Together,” which features her daughter on background vocals, this seems to address the albums larger themes, but also a more hopeful near-ending track. By contrast to the menacing first track, the first single “Stronger Together” seems to be one of the healing codas, as the second to last track. I don’t have sources on this being the true inspiration, but given that her daughter Natashya Hawley sings background on this and the song is about being saved by a character named “Daughter Dear” in what seems to be a literal thank your to her now grown daughter and also pushes the idea that it is the young women of this world who can fix it. A lot of fans are speculating this track also seems to be addressing the Neil Gaiman situation directly: Gaiman is a long time friend of Tori and was Natashya’s godfather, and it was Tash who found out about what Gaiman did first and broke the news to her mother. I interpret it as, “we healed through this horror together,” as Tori has distanced herself from Gaiman since the news broke:
Key lyrics:
We found we could tackle it
And we could talk about it
And we could cry about it
And we could and we did
This is the live version, so the background vocals are not done by Tash but her three background singers she’s added to this tour as 50 years of live performing has taken its toll on her voice, but it will give you an idea of how the vibe at her concert for the upcoming tour will be, minus the string orchestra. It’ll be Tori, her bassist Jon Evans and new drummer Erik Harvin. Her longtime drummer Matt Chamberlain (he’s toured with a million legends but is probably best known for being Soundgarden’s drummer. Last I heard he was Lorde’s touring drummer) did the drums on the album, but he’s booked and busy for tours. last tour it was Ash Soan, no idea why he isn’t returning. There’s a lot of ~controversy~ about Tori using backup singers since she never had, but I think she chose singers who matched her pretty well and the reality of being older and having who knows what health problems, I get it. Plus a million artists use backing vocalists and no one cares. And in the past when she’s needed harmonies she’s sung along to prerecorded vocals of herself and no, I’d rather have a background singer that’s actually performing live. I think this is a good idea. /soapbox
We received the third single, “Gasoline Girls,” yesterday and it lands somewhere midpoint in the tracklist on the album, and its lyrics indicate the gathering of women to help fix the problems the protagonist is facing (nearly every album since 2002’s Scarlet’s Walk has been adopting a fictional persona and telling her story, the concept album is just what Tori does)
some key lyrics:
“Stalked by henchmen
Of that lizard scum
Free Speech?
What was that?
Here there is none
Now there is none”
Some other notes on the album:
-definitely seems to be the most concept-heavy since 2011’s Night of Hunters. The albums since have been lightly concept fare but have also included a lot of personal stories as she dealt with her mother’s stroke and death. Tori’s father passed last summer so I imagine that will be addressed, too, perhaps as the character experiencing the loss of a parent or a more direct interlude.
-I’m intrigued by the track “An Ode to Minnesota” which, considering was still recording into the spring, might have been a later addition to address the protests in Minnesota, but maybe not lol this is me talking out of my ass</i>
In Times of Dragons comes out May 1st. The Tour in Europe has already begun.
Source 1
Source 2
Source 3
Source 4
Source 5
Source 6
Source 7
Source 8
Source 9
Source 10
Source 11
Source 12
Source 13
this took forever lol if you read it all you get a ⭐ in 90s musical feud studies from ONTDU. enjoy! if you are a Courtney stan and have insights from her side, I’d love to hear it. I like Courtney but 90% of my knowledge comes from being a Tori fan so I might be missing some of the goss.
