Washoe County Library System

Despite the various crises that have occurred since 2017's Native Invader, Tori Amos has emerged with her most personal work in years an album bursting with warmth and connection, with deep roots in her earliest songwriting. Written during the third lockdown in Cornwall this year, the album is a universal story of going to rock bottom and renewing yourself all over again.

Amos began playing piano as a teenager for the politically powerful at hotel bars in Washington, DC, during the formative years of the post-Goldwater and then Koch-led Libertarian and Reaganite movements. The story continues to her time as a hungry artist in Los Angeles to the subsequent three decades of her formidable music career. Amos explains how she managed to create meaningful, politically resonant work against patriarchal power structures—and...