News: AOL Music Article (October 31, 2006)

The following article appears on AOL Music on October 31, 2006.

Tori Amos Gets Spooked
by Jessica Robertson

Tori Amos has long talked of dancing with her inner demons, venturing to the Underworld and hanging with Lucifer. Needless to say, the pint-sized piano siren is pretty fearless. But that doesn’t mean Amos isn’t spooked by a melody or two. When it comes to choosing her eeriest Halloween song, it ain’t your mama’s ‘Thriller.’

“If you really want to get into music that makes you squirm in your seat and is bone-chilling, then you have to check out [Russian composer] Sergei Prokofiev, because it’s so dissonant,” Amos tells AOL Music. “His musical vocabulary doesn’t come from the West. It doesn’t come from prosperity. It comes from unrest and terror. That’s the hardcore stuff.”

The minister’s daughter recommends the first movement of Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 4 in C minor, ‘Allegro Molto Sostenuto.’ “These Russian composers were writing out of a time of terror—pre-Cold War, Stalin. Talk about scary,” she says. “Some people think they’re leading spooky lives and yet, when you’re getting carted off into prisons, I think it’s a very different reality than going off to college, dressing up and having a margarita party.”