Tori Amos
in conversation with Busy Philipps
Tori Amos is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, pianist, composer, and, with Ann Powers, the New York Times bestselling author of Tori Amos: Piece by Piece. She has released fifteen studio albums, including her latest, Native Invader, in 2017.
Busy Philipps is a New York Times Best-Selling author, actor, activist, writer and previous late-night talk show host of Busy Tonight. Philipps served as executive producer on the show, alongside Tina Fey. In 2018, Philipps released a collection of humorous autobiographical essays in her book This Will Only Hurt A Little that was a New York Times Best Seller the first week. Currently Philipps is in the process of launching a new podcast Busy Philipps Is Doing Her Best with Caissie St. Onge. The podcast is produced by Cloud10 and set to premiere in June 2020. Philipps has also used her voice as an advocate and activist. In 2019, she joined the Advisory Board of SeeHer, testified before Congress on reproductive rights after publicly discussing her own abortion and launched the #youknowme campaign on social media.
Reviews, Interviews and Features
— Tori Amos Believes the Muses Can Help, The New Yorker
— The Legacy of Tori Amos, Wall Street Journal
— The “Tiny Ways” Tori Amos Is Getting Herself Through Quarantine, Vanity Fair
Resistance: A Songwriter’s Story of Hope, Change, and Courage
Since the release of her first, career-defining solo album Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos has been one of the music industry’s most enduring and ingenious artists. From her unnerving depiction of sexual assault in “Me and a Gun” to her post-September 11 album, Scarlet’s Walk, to her latest album, Native Invader, her work has never shied away from intermingling the personal with the political.
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 how her proud declarations of feminism and her fight for the marginalized always proved to be her guiding light. She teaches us to engage with intention in this tumultuous global climate and speaks directly to supporters of #MeToo and #TimesUp, as well as young people fighting for their rights and visibility in the world.
Filled with compassionate guidance and actionable advice—and using some of the most powerful, political songs in Amos’s canon—this book is for anyone determined to steer the world back in the right direction.