Sunday, May 17, 2009

I Get It Tori, You're Different

I'll preface this blog by saying that I have nothing against Tori Amos. I met her some years back and she seems like a smart, charming, funny, warm, albeit intense, woman. I'm not the biggest fan of her music with the exception of the "Professional Widow" Remix & "Sorta Fairytale" which are both exceptional songs.

But I was driving to the gym today and heard her new song "Welcome To England" and it got me wondering... why does she sing the way she does? It can't be where she was born. For as much as I'm sure she'd like everyone to think she's English, she was born in North Carolina. It can't be just the way she talks because I've heard her talk on numerous occasions and she speaks quite normally. So why then does she pronounce words so strangely? It's like she wants them to sound a different way than they do. Like she has a way she wants her mouth to move and a sound she wants to come out so she has to find words that closely resemble those sounds.

Her new song starts: "Do a daaaaaay-unce foe meee, beby it is lie-steh-el-yup on me." What is lie-steh-el-yup? Well it's the word 'laced' of course. And it continues for virtually every line of the song. day-he-hey-vuuuul=Devil, aaaaaayeveryyy-woe-ho-own=everyone, ques-cheeee-uhn=question. This sort of singing doesn't even suggest having lived someplace where you would pick up an accent. It's just her being a 'quirky' 'unique' artist who thinks she's so different that she has to even have her own way of pronouncing words. Listening to a Tori Amos song, you almost wish there was a Tori to English translation program on the net you could plug her lyrics into. It's like cracking a code just to figure out what she's actually saying.

I have nothing more to say on the subject. I just think it's interesting. That being said, here's one of those faves I mentioned earlier. It's got such a great beat you don't have to have a clue what she's saying :)