Country Mouse

Little Earthquakes Turns 20 | Stereogum.com

I bought my copy sometime in 1993; it was one of the six CDs I got for free by subscribing to the BMG Music Club, and I don’t remember being all that amped about it before listening. But when I did dig into it, I got lost. It was the first time I really pored over a lyric sheet.

God knows how I made sense of any of it. Amos was 28 when she released the album, twice my age, and the album has a whole lot to say about that particular stage of life, when you’ve been through absolute awfulness that you’re only then starting to piece together and understand. A lot of the album is about attempts to shake off the bullshit you grew up accepting as true, and more of it is about processing the horrible things that might’ve happened to you since then. A few of her lines — “Boy, you best pray that I bleed real soon” — only make sense once you’ve had your first pregnancy scare. On the album’s centerpiece, the harrowing a cappella story-song “Me And A Gun,” Amos describes a rape with a scarily dead-eyed calm that I’m sure I’ll never fully grasp. But the basic idea — heavy shit, rendered with quiet beauty — still resonated.

In college, my cousin Bryant, my best friend Moriah, and I drove to Jacksonville to see Tori in concert, and just went totally & completely fangirl (and boy) crazy.  I felt at the time like I had never heard piano played before, like I had a hole in my chest and Tori’s voice was the only thing enabling me to breathe.  It’s embarrassing to think about how much her lyrics meant to me then, having had next to no life experience at the time, but in my opinion, the music hasn’t aged at all.