Tori Amos – From the Choirgirl Hotel (1998) Part 7
Playboy Mommy dealt with my feelings of rejection
I was kind of looking forward to this track, especially because it’s the album’s third most popular track on last.fm. Weird enough, as the song isn’t one of the singles, but it still tops Cruel or Raspberry Swirl. My initial guess is the word ‘playboy’ in the song’s title might have a bit to do with its popularity…
However, it’s time to stop speculating and listen to it:
This is a live piano-only version of the song, but it comes really close to the album version. It’s another ballad, touching again the miscarriage problem, extremely sad and touching. Underneath the story about the woman who is pregnant and her relationship(s) with the men in the army, you’ll find Tori addressing to her lost baby girl. Here’s a quick link to the lyrics and some interesting comments.
And last but not least comes ‘Pandora’s Aquarium’, which, in Tori’s own words, was the very thing that broke her out of her suffering over her loss and helped her move on and create this wonderful album: “You know when you’ve cried and cried, and you really can’t cry anymore, so you’re very quiet? I started hearing the water, and “Pandora” – the last song on the record – came to me. She was sort of warning me that there are so many feelings under the rocks that I needed to turn into. She told me, ‘You need to dive into this one, Tori, because your healing is in there. Once you go, it’s a whole new journey, but you’ve got to metaphorically leave this little dock and come with me to find out what’s really in this ocean of feelings.’ So i did. And that’s where I met these songs.”
The song does flow like water and unfortunately there are no professional live recordings online, although she has been playing this song in many of her tours. So here’s a bootleg video from her ’98 Choirgirl tour – not the best sound, but decent enough:
Lyrics here.
