News: Denver Post Article (November 22, 2007)

This short article in The Denver Post by Ricardo Baca (Denver Post’s Pop Music Critic) is a nice descriptive piece about the moment in 1994 when he became a Toriphile. The title of the article says it all.

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Track 8 came on and changed everything

That moment of discovery is something that always seems to stick with music lovers. You remember where you were the first time you heard David Bowie’s slithery voice or what you were wearing upon your first introduction to the epic, early videos of R.E.M. or New Order.

And so, a brief story: It was a snowy day in February 1994, and friends and I were eating pistachios in the Fort Collins hotel room that would be our home for the coming All-State Choir weekend. We were choir nerds in high school, and All-State was a true honor — and an opportunity to get out of Denver and slack around with other choir kids.

While I sang in the men’s choir that year, my friend Travis was in the mixed chorus, and Zipporah performed in the women’s group. But when we weren’t rehearsing, we talked in our rooms, throwing shells at the garbage pail at the end of the bed. That’s when Travis pulled out the new Tori Amos CD, “Under the Pink.”

We started at track 1, “Pretty Good Year,” and my interest was piqued. Her voice was bizarrely addictive, and her careful piano work was a beautiful complement to her hushed musings. The recording emphasized the breaths she would take between the lines, and even her sensual singing voice was like one elegant, elongated breath.

Halfway into the record, we were all getting into it. Beaming a bright smile, Travis was happy his love for Amos was being spread. And then we hit track 8, “Cornflake Girl,” and something about that moment told me that it was going to change everything.

We fell in love with Amos in a generic hotel room in 1994 with pistachios on our breath and Latin choral music on our minds. “Cornflake Girl” was the sealer, with its adorably psychotic whistling interludes and its soulful piano playing that defied the simplistic, driving beat.

“Cornflake Girl” was the gilded frame that housed and showcased Amos’ voice and lovably weird lyrics. That, coupled with her odd straddling of the piano bench at concerts, is what propelled Amos to multiplatinum superstardom.

She was too weird for some kids, her bright red hair a warning of the unbridled fire inside. We were weird for listening to her and not giving into the FM drivel of Ace of Base, Mariah Carey and Coolio. But since we were already weird — choir and drama nerds — it suited us just fine.

We were hardly unique. “Cornflake Girl” was the song that broke Amos to a much larger audience, and it wasn’t long before I was borrowing Travis’ copy of “Little Earthquakes,” her previous CD. It, too, was tremendous, but it’s safe to say that I wouldn’t have found it, that early, at least, had it not been for the infectious “Cornflake Girl”.

“Cornflake Girl” provided a space for the complex interplay between Amos’ sexuality and her playfulness. You could translate the lyrics any old way — and people did, especially Travis — but part of the joy in her words is how great they sound together. Yes, they mean something particular to her — it relates to women betraying other women — and they mean something else entirely to Travis. But for me, they just sound really natural and fun together: “Never was a Cornflake Girl/Thought that was a good solution/Hangin’ with the Raisin Girls/She’s gone to the other side.”

Frank Black of the Pixies liked the interplay of words, regardless of the meaning. And even though Amos’ lyrics are more deliberate, I don’t think she’d take any offense at the appreciation of their simple aesthetic beauty.

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