The Place Where Songs Live: revisiting Tori Amos’ dark and heartbreaking ‘From the Choirgirl Hotel’
“She’s convinced she could hold back a glacier, but she couldn’t keep baby alive.” The events that led to From the Choirgirl Hotel weren’t easy. In fact, much of what Tori Amos was faced with could only be described as nightmarish, compounded definitively by an unimaginable loss that pierced dreams of motherhood and introduced another reality far from anything she could have ever expected.
When looking at an artist’s broader discography, it’s usually easy to spot abnormalities, whether due to a momentary lapse in formulaic output or something much larger, like an unwarranted life event. Before From the Choirgirl Hotel, Amos’ music could be viewed as the ultimate form of intimacy, with piano-driven confessions from a singer-songwriter whose soul shone through any preconceived darkness or tragedy.
However, if her earlier albums, like Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink, were akin to listening in on private conversations and snippets of utterances from a woman figuring out her way in a corrupt world, From the Choirgirl Hotel was the shadowy viscera of a mind traumatised from the turmoil of miscarriage though emerging naturally from a journey of self-reflection to one on the brink of survival.
Taking the concepts of both entrapment and solitude within a hotel setting, Amos utilised the idea of an intrepid temporary stay away from home to allow her thoughts and feelings to flow freely, unburdened by the pretence of familiar settings with one that could be construed as enabling or restrictive, depending on your viewpoint. Described by the singer as the place songs “live”, the hotel referred to in the title serves as the temporary home for each song as if they were guests themselves, ones living separate lives to tell unique stories of their own.
Hence, From the Choirgirl Hotel immediately becomes both an anthology of distinctive narratives and a broader conceptual exploration, enhancing the solitary nature of the entire project and its independence from anything Amos recorded before or since. From the hotel itself, each song represents its own flavour of ignorant wonder, with independent lines running as prominently as Alfred Hitchcock’s themes of voyeurism and isolation in Rear Window.
In this instance, however, Amos redacts suspense in favour of a more direct approach from the outset, with ‘Spark’ tackling the tragedy of losing her unborn child with raw and unfiltered lyricism, as though what we hear is the first iteration of her notes for whatever will begin to form the first song of the album. Alongside the bold affirmation of failing to “keep a baby alive,” she also doubts “if there’s a woman” inside her and laments entertaining Judas if all holy divinity gives her is the cards she has been dealt.
“Once you’ve felt life in your body, you can’t go back to having been a woman that’s never carried life,” she later shared with Q. “You just start going insane. There’s nothing you can do, so you surrender and then… start again.” This continues in the following track, ‘Cruel’, though her grief has turned sour at the hands of the utter despair and frustration she feels at being dealt such an evil hand. This is most prominent in her double meanings, like: “Why can’t my balloon stay up in a perfectly windy sky?”
Though each song holds its touch of melancholy, ‘Hotel’ and ‘Playboy Mommy’ feel the hardest to swallow. The former tackles a broader statement about Amos’s disillusionment at the time while pandering to her broader concept of feeling shackled inside a hotel room. Its haunting atmosphere makes the hotel seem like a conduit for disconnection and yearning, even when resigned to the fate of never being able to break free.
‘Playboy Mommy’ signposts a turning point on From the Choirgirl Hotel, not just in terms of its address of tragedy but because it also, somehow, feels like the most stripped-back and vulnerable track on the whole album. But it’s this immense vulnerability that paves the way for Amos’ ultimate survival, emitting what could only be viewed as a therapeutic outcry laced with the kind of lingering sadness that imprints a lonely heart, even after years of grieving.
On top of it all, Amos’ venture into her darkest sonic exploration is hoisted subtly by a cinematic disposition, though only in the confident chaos she executes throughout. There are many moments of quiet contemplation, but the music feels forceful and intense with deep-rooted pain, even in the delicate moments where her voice appears just above a tear-filled whisper.
