Tori Amos’s 20 greatest songs

With her 60th birthday on the horizon, we celebrate the musician’s passionate voice and unflinching, witty lyrics

A gripping response to the Juliana v United States lawsuit (in which 21 young people sued the US government for violating their constitutional rights by causing dangerous carbon dioxide concentrations). Amos ramps up the eco-themed tension via an urgent guitar line, explosive Middle Eastern-sounding strings and a mantra-like repurposing of Hank Williams’ old onstage signoff, “if the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise”, sung by Amos and her daughter Natashya.

Pre-wedding jitters, laden with memories of youth that are both carefree (weed-fuelled sleepovers, David Cassidy) and troubled (“you’re only popular with anorexia”), are ultimately quelled by the summoning of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s apparent serenity: the strings pulse insistently; Amos’s vocal flutters and soars.

Amos’s work has seldom dipped below a certain standard, which means her later albums feel oddly undervalued: because one expects them to be good, it’s easy to overlook how good they are. The Covid-fuelled album Ocean to Ocean is a case in point, as evidenced by the simple but striking piano ballad Flowers Burn to Gold.

This is the highlight of the ambitious, classical music-inspired song cycle Night of Hunters. Exactly what’s supposed to be going on in the story at this point is a little confusing, but you can read the song as a meditation on female power – or the lack thereof – and the melody and woodwind arrangement are just lovely.

Inspired by a letter from an English fan suggesting his best years were already behind him at 23, Pretty Good Year opens Amos’s second album in dramatic style: a delicate piano ballad that blindsides the listener with a sudden, solitary burst of lurching, grunge-inspired guitar that shifts the mood from empathy to frustration and back.

There’s a faint country undercurrent to the sound of Trouble’s Lament, a song that could be taken either as a straightforward depiction of a woman desperately, restlessly fleeing her past, or as a feminist allegory: “She is armed and will fight for the souls of girls around the world / Standing up to Satan.”

Apparently based on Scarborough Fair, not that you’d know – although there’s a hint of Simon and Garfunkel’s The Boxer in the wordless opening vocal – Tear in Your Hand sounds smart and emotive in its depiction of a relationship ending, and stadium-anthem-ready. It blazes along, powered by booming drums and electric guitar.

There are lengthy essays online devoted to unpicking the lyrics of Caught a Lite Sneeze, which apparently allude to everything from Sumerian goddess Inanna to Amos’s fling with Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor. Indulge if you wish – of such things are cult followings made – or simply immerse yourself in its eerie, charged, harpsichord-led, industrial-rhythm-driven atmosphere.

The Beekeeper was an album that attracted criticism, for its length, its abstruseness and – from Amos herself – for its arrangements. But perhaps we can all agree that Sleeps With Butterflies is its highlight. Culled from the smoother end of Amos’s oeuvre, it’s a gentle, warm paean to a long-term relationship, with marvellous harmony vocals.

Experimental and expansive, the half-live, half-studio-recorded To Venus and Back found Amos ruminating on everything from Napoleon Bonaparte to hallucinogenic drugs to femicide. Meanwhile, on Spring Haze a bad plane journey is alchemically transformed into a song that’s mysterious, ominous and – weirdly – sexy. A track that is as haunting as anything she has recorded.

The initial version of Amos’s debut album was rejected by her label, prompting a raft of new songs, among them Precious Things, which – with its stream-of-consciousness lyrics and ever-building momentum – sounds like a dam of frustration suddenly breaking. Most memeable line: “So you can make me come – that doesn’t make you Jesus.”

Cooling was written for Boys for Pele but relegated to a B-side – incorrectly, Amos later judged, which explains why she’s returned to it so often on stage. (The best-known version is on the live half of To Venus and Back.) It manages to be both lyrically elliptical and completely heartbreaking: quite a feat.

Amos’s ninth album, American Doll Posse, was a tough sell – 23 tracks, ostensibly performed by five different personae, with everything from ragtime to experimental guitar noise in the musical mix – but Bouncing Off Clouds is a straightforward pleasure. It’s just a fabulous, surging pop song, with a terrific chorus.

Ubiquitous in the mid-90s and still Amos’s best-known song – covered by Florence + the Machine, recently used on the soundtrack of the TV series Yellowjackets – Cornflake Girl’s stammering hook and saga of female betrayal sounds just as arresting nearly 30 years on. This is mysterious, off-beam pop that invites you to unravel it.

A lot of Amos’s songs are lyrically complex and open to multiple interpretation, but the joy of A Sorta Fairytale is its simplicity – a depiction of a car journey that starts out the stuff of perfect memories but ends in disillusionment, set to music that manages to be epic yet intimate.

In Europe, the Armand Van Helden remix of Professional Widow was such a huge hit it obliterated the original in the mass consciousness. It’s a shame, great though Van Helden’s version is: in its initial form, Professional Widow is a very different beast – seething, bitter, potent, utterly compelling.

It made sense that Amos became huge during the grunge era. While she didn’t have much in common musically with Nirvana, she dealt in a similar kind of raw self-examination, as on Winter’s shattering exploration of self-esteem, ageing and her relationship with her father. Five minutes of unrelenting – if beautifully arranged – emotional punches to the gut.

Musically abrasive – at least by the standards of Amos’s piano-led early albums – with lyrics to match, the song upbraids Christianity, particularly the Catholic church, for its misogyny and what Amos has described elsewhere as “violent and hateful devotion”. It’s angry, snarky, witty (“Do you need a woman to look after you?”) and absorbing.

Spark is resolutely not messing about. The video, featuring Amos unsuccessfully attempting to evade a kidnapper, came prefaced with a content warning; the song itself dealt starkly with a miscarriage. Everything about it, from the electronic effects on her vocals to the dramatic arrangement to the churning climax, feels disturbing, bold and brilliant.

There’s something faintly amazing about the fact that Silent All These Years, the epitome of what made Amos’s debut album so striking, wasn’t intended to be sung by Amos at all: she wrote it for – of all people – 70s soft-rock superstar Al Stewart. The lyrics stir The Little Mermaid, nitrous oxide abuse and an unplanned pregnancy into a dissection of how women’s voices aren’t heard, but its brilliance lies in the way it marries its cathartic fury to gently affecting music, effectively lulling the listener into a false sense of security. This was not your standard mainstream singer-songwriter at work.