Just over 15 years ago I was horrified to discover that 10,000 Maniacs didn’t write their songs together. At that time I thought that all bands wrote their music together. (I also thought that REM came from Athens, Greece, rather than Athens, Georgia. I never lived that down!) Instead, Natalie Merchant would come up with the lyrics and the rest of the band came up with the music. I felt cheated. It made music appear to be more of a construction rather than something that just evolved. Music would have to be rewritten and tweaked to match the lyrics, and vice versa. Neither original idea would remain intact. Perhaps that’s why I’m drawn ultimately to solo artists and in particular those who write, arrange, perform and produce their creations in isolation.

With the launch of Tori Amos’s new album The Beekeeper, there’s also a special edition DVD which includes bonus photoshoot material and a special bonus track. There is however a much more interesting coincidental release: Tori Amos: Piece by Piece is the result of a two year long collaboration between Tori and respected music journalist Ann Powers. It consists of an organised collection of conversations and thoughts about Tori as an artist, as a private and public individual, and as a woman. Through all of this, it is ultimately an unfinished biography. One of the interesting things about her music has been the lyrics. Heck, it took me 12 years to understand what her debut album was about. Reading the start of this book makes me understand why. Tori involves herself with people when she’s out and about, particularly on tour. She buys books, newspapers, talks to people and wants to learn about the people and places she goes to. It’s this nature she represents in her songs. Fortunately, throughout the book are a couple of pages about some of the songs she has written for this and previous albums. For example, the song Ireland represents her Irish part of her ancestry, but also fleetingly incorporates the story of Macha, a goddess of Motherhood and Blood who was forced by her husband to run a race against the king’s horses when she was nine month’s pregnant to fulfill a boast. Apparently, there’s a whole troop of Toriphils who research her lyrics to find out what they’re all about. And there’s poor me trying to work them all out on my own: take the background to Marys of the Sea (buy the book, or you can find it on my coffee table, page 79) as a stark example of this.

Which brings me back to the art of songwriting and while I’ll probably never love Tori’s music as much as, say, Kristin Hersh, Jane Siberry or Nerina Pallot, although if there is any possible measure of difference, it’s very marginal. These three songwriters embody and represent themselves entirely in their music. Occasionally they do divert to tell other stories, but in the main, it’s all about themselves, their family and their emotions. Tori is proportionately opposite: or so I thought. But I was wrong. Tori’s music is mainly personal, but she encodes it. Her book explains why. Having realised this, I feel a duty to spend more time with Tori’s music, because without the understanding of her writing I’m only seeing half of her story..