Tori Amos is a dynamic performer, sensible songwriter, achieved pianist, and all-around cool, cool woman. But from time to time, interpreting her poetic tune lyrics generally is a puzzle, particularly her Silent All These Years lyrics.
I’m a large Tori Amos fan, and I’ve finished my best possible to synthesize the Silent All These Years lyrics. Here’s a bit of little bit of historical past, and the lyrical research I got here up with….
The Song used to be launched as the second one unmarried on Amos’s first studio album Little Earthquakes, even though she wrote it a lot previous when she used to be recording Y Can’t Tori Read. By 1992, it used to be picked up via RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) in the United Kingdom to advertise consciousness for the group, and used to be re-released in america in 1997. Tori claims that the tune isn’t completely auto-biographical as a result of she wrote it with a view to position it with every other artist on the time. (Songwriters oftentimes do that when they are beginning out.)
In my opinion, on the other hand, the tune is biographical in a non-literal sense as a result of it is about an artist giving up her voice, or her essence as a lady. This interpretation is supported via the truth that Tori used to be admittedly impressed lyrically via “The Little Mermaid” via Hans Christen Andersen, by which a mer-woman offers up her voice with a view to catch a prince. As an artist who used to be seeking to “make it” via pitching songs to different artists to sing, I feel it is a cheap assumption that Tori used to be this symbolic girl giving up her voice to every other.
A extra literal and fully other interpretation, however now not essentially auto-biographical, might be that the singer has simply discovered about an unplanned being pregnant, and is compelled to surrender her voice or essence throughout the agonizing decision-making strategy of whether or not or to not get an abortion. Perhaps the singer has been “Silent All These Years” as a result of she feels disgrace in having aborted it, coupled with the disgrace in now not having talked in regards to the emotional ache it led to her some of these years.
Here are some lyrical references that I feel improve this interpretation:
“the Antichrist in the kitchen” is one in every of her folks screaming at her, and he or she’s “saved by the garbage truck” as a result of she’s exposing her emotional “garbage” or messiness now via confessing those studies via tune.
“Boy you best pray that I bleed real soon”….telling her lover that she may well be pregnant.
The “paper cup” generally is a being pregnant take a look at.
“Years go by, will I choke on my tears” would possibly discuss with the singer’s suspicion she would possibly are living to be apologetic about an abortion later in existence, although it is the simplest answer presently.
Whether or now not you trust my literal and non-literal interpretations of Tori Amos’s “Silent All These Years” lyrics, it is arduous to disagree that it is an intriguing multi-faceted tune.
Source via Liz Marrin
