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It’s Throwback Thursday and we head back to 1992 – To February 25, 1992 – the day that Tori Amos released her debut album Little Earthquakes in the United States.
First some background on Amos…At age 5 she became the youngest-ever student to enroll at Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute. At 11, she was thrown out due to her inability to sight-read as well as she could play by ear. At 13, she started performing at Washington, D.C.’s piano bars where, chaperoned by her pastor dad in his clerical collar, she’d take requests and try out her own material. And by 24, she tasted failure when her band Y Kant Tori Read.
In 1992, Nirvana and other rock bands ruled the charts and airwaves, Little Earthquakes was something totally different musically, but maybe just as radical. It chronicled a woman coming to terms with post-traumatic stress disorder. Her first single, "Me and a Gun," is a harrowing account of her rape at 21. She resents being taught to bury her thoughts and silence her voice on the single "Silent All These Years" and refuses to destroy herself for a man on "Crucify." She told CNN, "Little Earthquakes, in truth, was much more like a diary form of things that have happened in my whole life, finding my own voice."
Poetic, melodic and so well thought out – the songs on Little Earthquakes flow like chapters of a book that should be studied on college campuses across the country. If early Elton John (think Madman Across the Water) and Kate Bush came together musically, you’d have Little Earthquakes.
Fun fact: One of the producers of Little Earthquakes was Ian Stanley, who was a member of Tears For Fears. Tears For Fears released their album, Songs From the Big Chair on this day in 1985.
The argument will always be there – what’s the greatest debut album – and while Little Earthquakes isn’t THE greatest, it certainly is extraordinary in what it was and how it helped shape so many other artists to follow. Tori Amos was a groundbreaking artist and to this day remains an important voice in music.
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