Christ Church (Delgany, County Wicklow, Ireland) Georgian house (County Cork, Ireland) (principal recording) The Egyptian Room (New Orleans, LA) Dinosaur Studios (New Orleans, LA) AIR Studios (London) (additional recording)
Boys for Pele is the third studio album by American singer and songwriter Tori Amos. Preceded by the first single, "Caught a Lite Sneeze", by three weeks, the album was released on January 22, 1996, in the United Kingdom, on January 23 in the United States, and on January 29 in Australia. Despite the album being Amos's least radio friendly material to date,[3]Boys for Pele debuted at number two on both the US Billboard 200 and the UK Albums Chart,[4][5] making it her biggest simultaneous transatlantic debut, her first Billboard top 10 debut, and the highest-charting US debut of her career to date.[6]
Boys for Pele was recorded in rural Ireland and Louisiana and features 18 songs that incorporate harpsichord, clavichord, harmonium, gospel choirs, brass bands and full orchestras. Amos wrote all of the tracks, and for the first time, she served as sole producer for her own album. For Amos, the album was a step into a different direction, in terms of singing, songwriting, and recording, and is experimental in comparison to her previous work.[7][8][9]
Background
During the recording of her previous album, Under the Pink (1994), Amos's longtime professional and romantic relationship with Eric Rosse, who co-produced a considerable amount of her pre-Pele work, disintegrated. That loss, combined with a few subsequent encounters with men during the Under the Pink promotional tour, forced Amos to re-evaluate her relationship with men and masculinity.[7] Amos explained, "In my relationships with men, I was always musician enough, but not woman enough, I always met men in my life as a musician, and there would be magic, adoration. But then it would wear off. All of us want to be adored, even for five minutes a day, and nothing these men gave me was ever enough."[10]
Songs began appearing in fragments, often while on stage during the Under the Pink tour.[10] After a trip to Hawaii during which Amos learned about legendary volcano goddessPele, the album began taking shape; Amos conceived of the songs as representing stealing fire from the men in her life as well as a journey to finding her own fire as a woman.[11] From there, Amos explained, the songs just came. "Sometimes the fury of it would make me step back, I began to live these songs as we separated. The vampire in me came out. You're an emotional vampire, with blood in the corner of your mouth, and you put on matching lipstick so no one knows."[10]
During this time, Amos, who has openly discussed her experiences with psychedelic drugs, particularly in relation to Boys for Pele, did ceremonies with a South American shaman and experienced meeting the devil, leading her to write the track "Father Lucifer."[12]
The album would ultimately consist of 15 full-length songs and four short "interludes". As Amos was finding "parts and pieces of myself that I had never claimed" on this journey,[13] the 14 primary songs represent the number of body parts of the Egyptian godOsiris that his wife, the goddess Isis, had to find to put his body back together in Egyptian mythology.[14] The arrangement of the songs on the album reflects the progression Amos intended to achieve on the double vinyl LP of the album; each of the four sides of the album on vinyl would open with an interlude track that leads into the rest of the three or four songs on each side.[15] The vinyl release is the only version of the album in which the interludes ("Beauty Queen", "Mr. Zebra", "Way Down", and "Agent Orange") are not numbered.
Production
Boys for Pele is Amos's first self-produced album; she would continue producing her own albums ever since. Given that the album deals with the role of women in religion and relationships, and particularly in light of her breakup with Rosse, who had served as producer for her previous two albums, Amos felt that it was appropriate to take complete control over producing Boys for Pele, as a "bid for independence".[16] Of producing the album herself, Amos said, "I was at the point I could not answer to anybody. I'd been answering my whole life to some patriarchal figure."[10]
Theme and lyrical content
Two underlying currents run through Boys for Pele: exploring the role of women in both patriarchal religion and relationships. Amos had previously written songs in a religious and/or theological context ("Crucify" from Little Earthquakes (1992), "God" from Under the Pink), but her viewpoint takes a particularly feminist slant on this album. "The feminine part of God has been circumcised out of all religions... God (is) a patriarchal force, a very masculine energy, with the feminine having been subservient, either being the mother, the lover, the virgin, but never the equal, never to have the whole."[17] "Muhammad My Friend", the eighth track on the album, best represents this aspect of the album's theme with the line, "It's time to tell the world/We both know it was a girl back in Bethlehem."
Amos derived the album's title from the Hawaiian volcano goddess, Pele, with the "boys" representing the men in her life. "First I wanted to sacrifice all these guys to the volcano goddess and roast them like marshmallows, then I decided they gave me a really wonderful gift,"[11] Amos said of the title. Amos herself has described the album as a novel, as a "story of the descent of a woman to gain her passion and gain her compassion,"[18] chronicling a woman's self-discovery in a male-dominated world,[17] looking for fragments of herself and being suppressed.[11] Songs such as "Blood Roses", "Caught a Lite Sneeze", "Hey Jupiter", "Doughnut Song" and "Putting the Damage On" deal directly with the aftermath of a break-up and a woman's reflection on the failed relationship.
"Blood Roses", which Amos had initially intended to serve as the opening track to the album, finds the singer scorned over a failed relationship, belting out lines such as, "can't forget the things you never said" and "I've shaved every place where you've been boy". Regarding "Caught a Lite Sneeze", Amos says, "the whole current is doing anything so that you don't have to face yourself. Nothing is enough";[19] her previous relationships with men being the song's backbone with lines like, "boys on my left side, boys on my right side, boys in the middle and you're not here, I need a big loan from the girl zone."
Recording
Amos had initially planned to record the entire album in the American South because "there's a hiddenness about the South, and I wanted to go back there because it was similar to how I felt in my relationships with men,"[14] but the bulk of the record was recorded in a church in Delgany, County Wicklow, Ireland, as well as in New Orleans, Louisiana.[20] Given her religious upbringing, Amos was drawn to record in a church, not in anger, but "with the intention of wholeness and of bringing a fragmented woman back to freedom."[21] Amos chose to record the album in a church because it was about searching for an energy current,[22] about claiming the passionate aspect of womanhood that the church teaches is wrong, "the idea of speaking my truth, no censorship, in a place that did not honor anyone's truth unless it was the church's truth,"[18] "so I figured if I was going to claim my womanhood, my passion, and sing this record – which, for me, was claiming fragments that I had suppressed for a long time – then I was going to go back to a church, back to the old world, to do it."[23]
Amos's sound engineer came up with the idea of enclosing Amos by herself in a sound-deadening box, so that her normal body movement would not be caught by the microphones surrounding the piano and harpsichord. Only her arms protruded from the box. This technique allowed for more spaciousness in the sound, more of the room acoustics.[7]
The writing process and recording session for Boys for Pele is one of Amos's most prolific. Between the songs that were included on the album, included as B-sides, and included in later compilations, Amos composed and recorded approximately 35 songs during this time.
The chart displayed here lists only the songs that were released as B-sides on singles from Boys for Pele.
Many songs written and recorded for Boys for Pele were released in conjunction with subsequent albums or have yet to be released. Three such songs, "Cooling", "Never Seen Blue" and "Beulah Land", were recorded for inclusion on Boys for Pele, but were kept off the album, later released as B-sides on the "Spark" (1998) and "Jackie's Strength" (1998) singles.
Other songs were partially written during the Boys for Pele era and finished and released later: "Snow Cherries from France" appears on the Tales of a Librarian (2003) compilation, her final release with Atlantic; "Apollo's Frock" appears on Scarlet's Hidden Treasures (2004); and "Walk to Dublin", which was left off the album after disagreements over the musical structure of the song between Amos and her label, then revisited again during the From the Choirgirl Hotel (1998) recording sessions, was not released until A Piano: The Collection (2006).
Another song, "To the Fair Motormaids of Japan", was also recorded during the Boys for Pele recording sessions. It was released on a deluxe remastered rerelease of the album on November 18, 2016.
The Hey Jupiter EP includes live performances of some of Amos's previously released B-sides, including a cover of "Over The Rainbow", listed as "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". Amos also covered "I'm on Fire", "Landslide", and "Over the Rainbow" on VH1 Crossroads.
Artwork
The album's cover is a photo of Amos holding a large rifle, sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of an old wooden building. One of her legs is out of her pants and flung over the side of the chair. A snake coils around the chair and a large rooster hangs from the roof of the porch. The image is a nod to her song "Me and a Gun," which appears on the album Little Earthquakes and recounts a rape she suffered. "Well, it's [the cover of the album] a reference to 'Me and a Gun', a song I wrote that was on Little Earthquakes. And the idea that there's a dead cock on my right and a live snake on my left. And the idea is that death and life... creation... what it's taken me to get here with men, and I don't want to be angry anymore. And you turn it over and you put the gun down, but I'm not pretending what it's taken to get me here. But no more resentment." [Live105 San Francisco (radio) – February 7, 1996] It was taken by Cindy Palmano in October 1995 in New Orleans.[24]
Promotion
In late 1995, Atlantic released a promotional-only CD in Germany and America simply titled Tori Amos, under catalog number PRCD-6535-2. "New Music from Tori Amos..." appeared on the front cover, and upon opening the jewel case, "...is coming soon" appears on the back of the insert. The release is a 9-track promotional compilation of Amos's singles from her first two solo albums, meant for radio stations to play to generate interest in the forthcoming album. The track "Precious Things" is mislabeled as "These Precious Things" on both the CD and the back cover, while "Crucify (Remix)" is listed when in fact the album version of the song is included.
The album's first single, "Caught a Lite Sneeze", was released commercially and to radio stations on January 2, 1996, three weeks prior to the album's release.
Amos's marketing team made use of the internet to market and promote Boys for Pele. Some reviews provided links to the Atlantic homepage or to Amos's homepage to listen to audio clips from the album,[25] while others provided telephone numbers to call to listen to audio clips.[26] "Caught a Lite Sneeze" was notable in being one of the first singles to have its worldwide release on the internet as a free download.[27]
Critics overall praised the album's expanded instrumentation, and the acoustics that recording the album in a church afforded,[37] but otherwise reaction to the album was polarized, particularly with regard to the lyrics. Boys for Pele is more lyrically dense than Amos's two previous albums, taking poetic obscurity to new heights.[8][38] Some critics praised its ultra-personal lyrics[7][9][14] while others panned what they called its overt and excessive self-indulgence[22][39] and "ozone-layer lyrics"[40] described as unfathomable, impenetrable, and personally opaque.[26][41] One scathing review suggested skipping the album, instead reading something "a little bit more intelligible—like maybe Gravity's Rainbow written in Greek",[25] while Rolling Stone went as far to bluntly say that most of the album's lyrics are "ultimately mystifying and, well, bad".[16]Robert Christgau of The Village Voice assigned the album a "dud" rating, indicating "a bad record whose details rarely merit further thought."[42]
One reviewer observed that Amos' unfettered creativity due to serving as her own producer cost the album its accessibility.[39] Amos has stated that her goal was not to make radio-friendly music with universal lyrics, and went on to say that "a song is only part lyrics and, for me anyway, more than 50% music, easy. There's so much subtext in the music that's part of the story."[38]
Amy Gentry has noted the gendered way that many critics, male and female alike, approached the album. This included mockery of Amos' performance style for being overly sexualized, and criticisms of the supposed lesbian subtext in the album's lyrics.[43]
Despite receiving mixed reviews upon its release, Boys for Pele has gone on to become a strong-selling album and to be cited as having been critically underrated.[44] In 2008, The Guardian listed Boys for Pele on its list of 1,000 Albums To Hear Before You Die.[45]
The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 102,000 copies in its first week, going on to achieve RIAA Gold certification in the US by early March.[49] The album debuted at number two in the UK as well,[5] making it the highest-charting transatlantic debut of any of Amos's albums. Prior to its release, the album achieved BPI Silver certification in the UK,[50] followed by BPI Gold certification in March.[51] By May, US sales were already nearing Platinum certification status when "Talula", the album's second US single, which also appeared in the film Twister, was released and accompanied by a sticker that read, "From Tori's new album Boys for Pele – 900,000 and climbing!". Dance remixes of "Professional Widow" were released in July and by the end of the month the single reached number one on the BillboardHot Dance Music/Club Play charts in the US,[52] as well as topping the charts in Italy and the United Kingdom. The successful releases of "Talula" and subsequently "Professional Widow"[53][54] surged albums sales enough that Boys for Pele achieved RIAA Platinum certification in August, the day after the US release of the Hey Jupiter EP.[49]
The success of remixes from this album led to the album being reissued in both the US and the UK. In the US, the original version of "Talula" was replaced by "Talula (The Tornado Mix)," which incorporates a minor dance beat. In the UK, "Talula (The Tornado Mix)" replaced the original version of the song and a remix of "Professional Widow" was added to the album, immediately following the original version of the song. As a result of the extra "Professional Widow" track, the song "In the Springtime of His Voodoo" was removed completely.
"In the Springtime of His Voodoo" was also remixed and released as a dance single, but was a much smaller club success.[55] Interest in the album resurfaced when Amos sang vocals on "Blue Skies", another club and dance hit by dance music artist BT that reached number one on the Hot Dance/Club Play chart exactly one year after the release of Boys for Pele.[56]
Boys for Pele remained on the Billboard 200 for 29 weeks throughout 1996, before falling off the chart in mid September.[57] According to Billboard, the album ranked number 100 on the Year-End Album Charts of 1996 in the U.S. in December.[47] To date, Boys for Pele is Amos's third-best selling album in the U.S.[58]
In early 2016, Tori Amos announced via Twitter that the album is slated for a deluxe reissue later in the year,[59] following the deluxe re-releases of her first two albums in 2015.
Reissues
Boys for Pele was reissued in the United States in June 1996. This reissue replaced the original version of "Talula" with the "Tornado Mix".[60] In February 1997, the album was reissued in the United Kingdom following the success of "Professional Widow". This 'Special Edition' inserted the full 8-minute Armand's Star Trunk Funkin' Mix of "Professional Widow" between the original version and "Mr. Zebra" and replaced the original version of "Talula" with the Tornado Mix version.[61] Due to time restrictions, the U.K. reissue removed the song "In the Springtime of His Voodoo".
A double-CD 20th Anniversary Deluxe edition of Boys for Pele was released on November 11, 2016 by Rhino Records. This edition restored the album back to its original track list and had a bonus CD with twenty-one tracks, four of which were previously unreleased.[62]Record Collector magazine praised the reissue, stating that the bonus material "will be difficult for fans to resist".[63]
Tori Amos is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Having already begun composing instrumental pieces on piano, Amos won a full scholarship to the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University at the age of five, the youngest person ever to have been admitted. She had to leave at the age of eleven when her scholarship was discontinued for what Rolling Stone described as "musical insubordination". Amos was the lead singer of the short-lived 1980s pop group Y Kant Tori Read before achieving her breakthrough as a solo artist in the early 1990s. Her songs focus on a broad range of topics, including sexuality, feminism, politics, and religion.
"Professional Widow" is a song written by the American singer-songwriter Tori Amos, released on her third album, Boys for Pele (1996). It is a harpsichord-driven rock song and its lyrics are rumored to have been inspired by the American songwriter Courtney Love. The song was released on July 2, 1996 by Atlantic and EastWest, as the third single from the Boys for Pele album in the US, containing remixes by the house music producers Armand van Helden and MK. The single reached number one on the US Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. In Italy, the original version peaked at number two in October 1996. An edited version of the Armand's Star Trunk Funkin' Mix of "Professional Widow" was originally released as a double A-side single with "Hey Jupiter" in Europe and Australia.
From the Choirgirl Hotel is the fourth studio album by American musician Tori Amos. It was released on May 5, 1998, on Atlantic Records. The album was Amos' first to be recorded at her own Martian Engineering Studios in Cornwall, England and was self-produced, with the mixing being handled by longtime collaborators Marcel van Limbeek and Mark Hawley, whom she had married in early 1998.
Scarlet's Walk is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter and pianist Tori Amos. It was released on October 28, 2002 in the UK and October 29 in the US on Epic Records, making it her first release on the label after her split with Atlantic Records. Her first studio album of original material since To Venus and Back in 1999, the 18-track concept album details the cross-country travels of Scarlet, a character loosely based on Amos, and was greatly inspired by the changes in American society and politics post-September 11, 2001. Topics explored on the album include nationalism, personal relationships, and the death of a close friend. Amos also took inspiration from the stories of her grandfather, who she claims was Cherokee and told her of the abuses against Native Americans throughout the United States' history.
Under the Pink is the second studio album by singer-songwriter Tori Amos. Upon its release in January 1994, the album debuted atop the UK Albums Chart on the back of the hit single "Cornflake Girl", and peaked at number 12 in the US.
A Tori Amos Collection: Tales of a Librarian is the first retrospective compilation album by American singer-songwriter Tori Amos. Given the option to be involved in the project, Amos elected to take a central role in the production of the collection, released in 2003 on her former label Atlantic Records.
"Putting the Damage On" is a ballad by American singer and songwriter Tori Amos, and is featured as the 17th track on her 1996 album, Boys For Pele. The song may have been initially considered as a single for the album, because copies of the album were accompanied by a sticker listing this song, along with "Caught a Lite Sneeze" and "Talula," as feature songs, but of all five singles released from the album, "Putting the Damage On" was not one of them. In the song, Amos is accompanied by her own piano playing, and by the Black Dyke Band.
Tori Amos is an American pianist and singer-songwriter whose musical career began in 1980, at the age of seventeen, when she and her brother co-wrote the song "Baltimore". The song was selected as the winning song in a contest for the Baltimore Orioles and was recorded and pressed locally as a 7" single. From 1984 to 1989, Amos fronted the synth-pop band Y Kant Tori Read, which released one self-titled album with Atlantic Records in 1988 before breaking up. Shortly thereafter, Amos began writing and recording material that would serve as the debut of her solo career. Still signed with Atlantic, and its UK counterpart East West, Amos' initial solo material was rejected by the label in 1990. Under the guidance of co-producers Eric Rosse, Davitt Sigerson and Ian Stanley, a second version of the album was created and accepted by the label the following year.
American Doll Posse is the ninth studio album by American singer-songwriter Tori Amos, released in 2007 by Epic Records. A concept album, American Doll Posse sees Amos assuming the identity of five different female personalities inspired by Greek mythology in order to narrate stories of life in modern America. Themes include opposition to the Iraq War, recording industry misogyny, disillusionment, sexuality, personal loss, and female empowerment in general. Musically, the record is more rock-oriented than other studio works by Amos, notably featuring more guitar and drums than previous albums The Beekeeper (2005) and Scarlet's Walk (2002).
"Caught a Lite Sneeze" is a song by American singer-songwriter Tori Amos, released by Atlantic and EastWest as the first single from her third studio album, Boys for Pele (1996), on January 1, 1996. The song is about wanting to do anything to keep a relationship going, knowing that it is over. It references Nine Inch Nails's album Pretty Hate Machine in the lyrics "Caught a lite sneeze / Dreamed a little dream / Made my own pretty hate machine." On December 11, 1995, Atlantic made the song available for streaming on their website, one of the earliest examples of a major label implementing such a feature.
"Talula" is a song by American singer-songwriter Tori Amos, released by Atlantic and EastWest as the second single from her third studio album, Boys for Pele (1996). The song reached number 22 on the UK Singles Chart and appeared in the Jan de Bont film Twister.
"Hey Jupiter" is a song written and performed by American singer-songwriter Tori Amos. It was released as the fourth single from her third studio album, Boys for Pele (1996), and was her first extended play (EP) since Crucify in 1992. The US EP Hey Jupiter features a re-recorded version of "Hey Jupiter" followed by four live tracks recorded during her Dew Drop Inn Tour of 1996. The song is also featured on the double A-side CD singles released in the UK and Australia.
Little Earthquakes is the debut solo album by the American singer-songwriter Tori Amos, featuring the singles "Silent All These Years", "China", "Winter" and "Crucify". After Atlantic Records rejected the first version of the album, Amos began working on a second version with her then-boyfriend Eric Rosse. The album was first released in the UK on January 6, 1992, where it peaked at number 14 in the charts.
"In the Springtime of His Voodoo" is a 1996 song written by American singer-songwriter Tori Amos. It is a harpsichord-driven rock dirge and was included on her third album, Boys for Pele (1996).
To Venus and Back is a double album by American singer, songwriter and pianist Tori Amos. Released on September 21, 1999, it comprises her fifth studio album and first live album. The first disc, entitled Venus: Orbiting, shows Amos increasingly experimenting with elements of electronica and trip hop, and spawned the singles "Bliss", "1000 Oceans", "Glory of the 80's", and "Concertina". The second disc, Venus Live, Still Orbiting, was recorded mostly during her Plugged '98 tour in support of her previous album, From the Choirgirl Hotel.
"Taxi Ride" is a song by American recording artist Tori Amos from her seventh studio album Scarlet's Walk (2002). The song was released as the album's second single in January 2003. It was written, composed and produced by Amos. The song is a folk pop track, which features instrumentation of electric guitars, drums, bongos, and acoustic guitar. The track was her second offering after departing from Atlantic Records and signed with Epic Records.
"London Girls" is a song by Chas & Dave from the album Job Lot, which was released as a single on 13 February 1983 and entered the UK Singles Chart at number 99. The song stayed in the charts for 9 weeks and peaked at number 63 on 26 March 1983.
John Philip Shenale is a Canadian composer, arranger, musician and producer based in Los Angeles.
Unbreakable Smile is the debut studio album by American singer Tori Kelly. It was released on June 23, 2015, through Capitol Records and Schoolboy Records. The album was executively produced by Max Martin. The album received generally positive reviews from critics.
Native Invader is the fifteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Tori Amos. It was released on September 8, 2017, through Decca Records. Its lead single "Cloud Riders", was released on July 27, 2017.
↑ Carmon, Iris (October 3–9, 2001). "Tori's Got a Gun". The Village Voice. Archived from "> the original on November 9, 2007. Retrieved January 20, 2008.
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