Sinful Attraction

Tori Amos was in town Monday night, a stop on her Sinful Attraction tour for her tenth studio album Abnormally Attracted To Sin. As passionate devotees of Tori's music, my best friend Willow and I took the day off work to attend the meet and greet and the performance at Abravanell Hall.

Willow and I have been fortunate enough to have met Tori a few times previously at meet and greets and a couple times backstage (with passes won on the radio). Still, we never pass up an opportunity to interact with this incredibly generous and compassionate artist. She is well aware of her influence and how her music has impacted so many of us emotionally and spiritually and is extremely open to connecting one-on-one with her fans.

So we sat around outside behind the Abravanell Hall building, chatting with other fans and getting sunburned in the shade-free 100 degree weather. The heat was ridiculous, but I really enjoyed hanging out with my best pal in this tradition that is going on nearly 10 years.

And, of course, it was so worth it!

The concert was, as always, nothing short of dazzling. Tori is passion personified; she is quite uninhibited on stage and radiates an intensely high energy. She played a generous set list, much of which was devoted to her latest album. She did, however, pull out a few rarer songs from way back and played several of my favorites including Bliss, Body and Soul, China and a gorgeously revamped version of Cooling.

(audio only..but well worth a listen!)

It's difficult to describe just how much Tori and her music means to me. I have never been so emotionally and spiritually moved by any other artist. She has a gift for taking the emotions of the human experience, particularly the feminine experience, and putting them movingly to song. I often find solace in her lyrics, a reminder that none of us is ever alone in that we all share common ground and experiences....as women and as human beings.

I first heard Tori's music as a high school sophomore. I had just met Willow, who introduced me to her music. Little did I know that was the beginning of a life-long friendship and the discovery of something so deeply inspiring. It was a bit of a slap-in-the-face, the revelation that hey, shit happens but you're not in this world alone, honey. At that time, it was a lesson that I very much needed to learn.



As time goes on and I continue to follow Tori's music, I still find wisdom and solace in her words and relate much of her music with my own experiences.



Additionally, her strong feminine representation and her ideal that, as women, we can all wield the power of the ancient goddesses within us is (at least to me) a refreshing breath of air in this sometimes stifling patriarchal society. We can be wives and mothers and still be sexy, strong and powerful.

And we can completely rock (leather pants optional).