All twelve tracks on 'from the choirgirl hotel' were written and produced by Tori Amos, with recording and mixing credits going to longtime associates Mark Hawley and Marcel Van Limbeek. The album was recorded in Cornwall, England in a 200-year-old barn, specially converted into a state-of-the-art recording studio. Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available. Click here to visit our frequently asked questions about HTML5 video. Among the most intense singer-songwriters to emerge during the 1990s, Tori Amos explores raw emotional terrain few performers would dare touch, and FROM THE CHOIRGIRL HOTEL is no exception.

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In 1991, as Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” recharged rock & roll, Tori Amos and her piano appeared. She was a North Carolinian conservatory dropout with a whole lotta love on the brain. A veteran of one failed rock album, a spandex debacle titled Y Kant Tori Read, Amos recharged herself on Little Earthquakes, emerging as a hennaed adventuress, the rare art-rock communicator who could flawlessly drop difficult bits of Béla Bartók into a tasty home-brew of the classical and the lowdown. Old enough to have worshiped Led Zeppelin as a Seventies kid — and bold enough to seize “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as her own (on 1992’s Crucify EP) — she recognized that grunge’s uneasy blend of emotional distress and sonic kicks represented a state of mind as well as a guitar sound.

On From the Choirgirl Hotel, Amos comes clean with the rock & roll that’s always driven her, from as far back as when she stormed out of her rehearsal room at the Peabody Conservatory. Whereas 1994’s Under the Pink and 1996’s Boys for Pele strove to extend Amos’ voice-and-piano foundation into different areas — R&B and dance — From the Choirgirl Hotel closes up shop and starts over with a live-band recording. A woolly jam dynamic pervades Hotel, from the paisley metallicism that kicks off “Spark” (the current single) to the grooving dream world of “Liquid Diamonds.” Throughout the album, Amos throws herself and her various keyboards into bass-drum-guitar ensembles augmented by percussion loops and string sections. In the past, all elements of her arrangements answered to Amos and her keyboards; now, she replaces that hierarchy with rock interaction. On From the Choirgirl Hotel, she’s just one of several tenders of her own sound garden.

But for all of her new material’s bracing accessibility, very little is very straight-up. Amos remains the girl whose background in European piano literature encouraged her to hear the unforgiving structures of the Baroque era, the vast spiritual and melodic vistas of the Romantic period, and the knotty imperatives of twentieth-century experimentalism as one ongoing compositional story — not a bad basis, thank you, for art rock with guts. And although these mixes don’t hesitate to occasionally bury her voice, Amos often still sings like the coloratura president of Robert Plant’s fan club. On songs like the technoish “Hotel” and the beat-happy “Raspberry Swirl,” moreover, she screws with timbre, lyrics and meter in the proud pop-collage tradition of Nineties artists like My Bloody Valentine, the Smashing Pumpkins, Björk, U2 and Garbage. Other times, Amos is more nostalgic, as on “She’s Your Cocaine,” which feels like the music of the hardest-working bar band — on Saturn.

Amos hasn’t completely abandoned ballads, not with showpieces like “Northern Lad,” as well as “Jackie’s Strength,” the center of this consistently alive album. That song, softly offset with clean guitar repetitions, relies on a magnificent string arrangement by Los Angeles hotshot John Philip Shenale. Amos begins as someone remembering the J.F.K. assassination, focusing on how an entire generation of American women immediately spun the event into a story about his abandoned wife. During this meditation, Amos’ character remembers a friend’s David Cassidy lunch box and sings the following hilarious, deeply Tori line: “Yeah, I mooned him once on Donna’s box.” It’s her fluid answer to the Pumpkins’ masterpiece “1979,” a perfect memory of pop-energy past.

From the Choirgirl Hotel offers chewy tales like the tough sway of “Playboy Mommy,” in which a mother never quite apologizes to her dead daughter for not being a squeaky-clean Carol Brady mom; and “Black-Dove (January),” an interiorized ballad about abuse and escape that breaks into rousing choruses of “But I have to get to Texas/Said I have to get to Texas.” What the album is so unfailingly good at, though, is capturing the exact geography of one woman’s imagination. In dashing rhythmic interpolations, a song titled “Iieee” intercuts different meters and moods — suspended piano landscapes, straightforward rock 4/4 beats, gnarled industrial wastelands and a floating symphonic soundtrack from a film that has opened only in Amos’ head. “We scream in cathedrals,” Amos sings, phrasing with an awesome gravitational pull. “Why can’t it be beautiful?” What the hell is rock & roll these days, anyway? Loud guitars? Transgressive hairstyles? Samples? Electric beats? Platform shoes? At any given time, it’s all or none of these things. But right now, From the Choirgirl Hotel qualifies. It’s a logical outcome of what Tori Amos has been doing this whole decade: In more ways than one, she screams in cathedrals.

From the Choirgirl Hotel is the fourth studio album by Americansinger and songwriterTori Amos, released on May 5, 1998. A departure from her previous albums, it was more a heavily produced project featuring a full rock band sound (instead of Amos's usual minimalist piano sound). The album debuted at number 5 on the Billboard 200 and number 6 in the UK. While falling short of the number 2 debut for her previous album, Boys for Pele (1996), From the Choirgirl Hotel is Amos's strongest debut to date in US sales, selling 153,000 copies in the first week.^[1] As of 2008 it has sold 778,000 copies in US. ^[2] In 1999, Amos received two Grammy nominations: Alternative Music Performance, and Female Rock Vocal Performance for 'Raspberry Swirl'.

The lead single 'Spark' became a hit after its release in June 1998 (becoming her last UK Top 40 hit to date, as well as her highest charting US single, reaching number 49), and was followed by 'Jackie's Strength' (September 1998) and 'Cruel'/'Raspberry Swirl' (November 1998).

The accompanying tour, Amos's first with a full band (using the album's personnel of Matt Chamberlain on drums, Jon Evans on bass, and long-time collaborator Steve Caton on guitar), was known as the 'Plugged '98 Tour' and took Amos through most of 1998.

• 3Track listing
• 5Charts

Album description[edit]

The album began recording in September 1997, with mastering complete by early February 1998.^[3] Following the trend set by 1996's Boys For Pele, Amos allowed several songs from the album to be remixed. Remixes of both 'Raspberry Swirl' and 'Jackie's Strength' were club hits. The album's theme dealt very closely with the first two in Amos's series of three miscarriages between 1996 and 1999.^[4]

Thematically and conceptually, the 'choirgirl hotel' of the title refers to the fictional, imaginary place where the songs 'live'. Amos pointed out that although the songs are recorded, they are also alive themselves - they can be re-modeled and reshaped in concert. Amos imagined the songs as living their own lives, all checking into the 'choirgirl hotel' (i.e. the album) but living separate lives. In the artwork, Amos included a hand-drawn map detailing the stomping ground of these songs.^[5]

The album artwork was created by the UK-based photographer, Katerina Jebb. The artwork features full-body color photocopies of Amos (in various couture outfits) as scanned by a human-sized photocopier.^[6]

Critical reception[edit]

From The Choirgirl Hotel Release Date

'The kookiness isn't dominant, she's stopped the attention-seeking lyrics almost completely and, yes, her pianos don't try to be guitars too often,' enthused John Aizlewood in Q.^[14] 'At last, she's putting the songs first and the band-led From the Choirgirl Hotel is, by any reasonable yardstick, a glorious coming of age.'^[14]

Track listing[edit]

All tracks written by Tori Amos.

B-sides[edit]

The album, as with most of Amos's albums, is also known for its collection of original b-sides. Amos recorded a host of songs that did not make the album, but were released as b-sides to various singles or performed live in concerts. The songs 'Cooling,' 'Never Seen Blue,' and 'Beulah Land' were originally written and recorded for 1996's Boys for Pele album. In 2010, several tracks from a demo CD for the album leaked online, including a new track entitled 'Violet's Eyes'.^[17] Parts of this song were included in two tracks on 2007's American Doll Posse, 'Almost Rosey' and 'Miracle'.

Personnel[edit]

• Tori Amos - keyboards, vocals
• Steve Caton - acoustic and electric guitar; mandolin on 'Black-Dove (January)'
• George Porter Jr., Justin Meldal-Johnsen - bass
• Matt Chamberlain - drums; marimba on 'Cruel'
• Andy Gray - programming

with:

• Stewart Boyle - guitar on 'Northern Lad'
• Willy Porter - guitar on 'Playboy Mommy'
• Al Perkins - steel guitar on 'Playboy Mommy'
• Sinfonia of London - on 'Jackie's Strength', conducted by David Firman, strings arranged by John Philip Shenale

Charts[edit]

Weekly charts[edit]

From The Choirgirl Hotel

Singles[edit]

Certifications[edit]

References[edit]

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1. ^'Garth Boxes In Billboard 200's Top Slot'. Billboard. 1998-05-14. Retrieved 2008-06-01.
2. ^https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1045442/ask-billboard
3. ^http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul98/articles/toriamos.html
4. ^'Vital Tori article from She Magazine in the UK - December 2003'.
5. ^'Tori, British Airways Highlife Magazine,'. May 1998.
6. ^'HEREINMYHEAD.COM - artistic expressions - katerina jebb profile'. Archived from the original on 2013-05-21. Retrieved 2007-02-22.
7. ^Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. 'From the Choirgirl Hotel – Tori Amos'. AllMusic. Retrieved August 10, 2015.
8. ^DeRogatis, Jim (April 30, 1998). 'Tori Amos, 'from the choirgirl hotel''. Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on March 4, 2017. Retrieved August 10, 2015.
9. ^Browne, David (May 4, 1998). 'From the Choirgirl Hotel'. Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved August 10, 2015.
10. ^Sullivan, Caroline (May 1, 1998). 'Tori Amos: From the Choirgirl Hotel (eastwest)'. The Guardian.
11. ^Scribner, Sara (May 3, 1998). 'A True Renegade Cavorts on Amos' 'Choirgirl Hotel''. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 10, 2015.
12. ^Segal, Victoria (May 2, 1998). 'Tori Amos – Songs From The Choirgirl Hotel'. NME. Archived from the original on October 2, 2000. Retrieved August 10, 2015.
13. ^Schreiber, Ryan (May 1, 1998). 'Tori Amos: From the Choirgirl Hotel'. Pitchfork. Archived from the original on December 23, 2007. Retrieved August 10, 2015.
14. ^ ^abcAizlewood, John (June 1998). 'Tori Amos: From the Choirgirl Hotel'. Q (141).
15. ^Hunter, James (April 16, 1998). 'From The Choirgirl Hotel'. Rolling Stone. Retrieved August 10, 2015.
16. ^Vowell, Sarah (June 1998). 'Original Sinner'. Spin. 14 (6): 127. Retrieved August 10, 2015.
17. ^'Tori Amos - Violet's Eyes (demo)'. YouTube. 2010-07-08. Retrieved 2012-02-17.
18. ^'Australiancharts.com – Tori Amos – From the Choirgirl Hotel'. Hung Medien. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
19. ^'Austriancharts.at – Tori Amos – From the Choirgirl Hotel' (in German). Hung Medien. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
20. ^'Ultratop.be – Tori Amos – From the Choirgirl Hotel' (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
21. ^'Tori Amos Chart History (Canadian Albums)'. Billboard. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
22. ^'Dutchcharts.nl – Tori Amos – From the Choirgirl Hotel' (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
23. ^'Lescharts.com – Tori Amos – From the Choirgirl Hotel'. Hung Medien. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
24. ^'Offiziellecharts.de – Tori Amos – From the Choirgirl Hotel' (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
25. ^'Charts.org.nz – Tori Amos – From the Choirgirl Hotel'. Hung Medien. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
26. ^'Norwegiancharts.com – Tori Amos – From the Choirgirl Hotel'. Hung Medien. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
27. ^'Official Scottish Albums Chart Top 100'. Official Charts Company.
28. ^'Swedishcharts.com – Tori Amos – From the Choirgirl Hotel'. Hung Medien. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
29. ^'Swisscharts.com – Tori Amos – From the Choirgirl Hotel'. Hung Medien. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
30. ^'Tori Amos | Artist | Official Charts'. UK Albums Chart. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
31. ^'Tori Amos Chart History (Billboard 200)'. Billboard. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
32. ^'Canadian album certifications – Tori Amos – From the Choirgirl Hotel'. Music Canada.
33. ^'British album certifications – Tori Amos – From the Choirgirl Hotel'. British Phonographic Industry.Select albums in the Format field.Select Gold in the Certification field.Type From the Choirgirl Hotel in the 'Search BPI Awards' field and then press Enter.
34. ^'American album certifications – Tori Amos – From the Choirgirl Hotel'. Recording Industry Association of America.If necessary, click Advanced, then click Format, then select Album, then click SEARCH.

From The Choirgirl Hotel Album