Track Listing

1. Pretty Good Year
2. God
3. Bells For Her
4. Past The Mission
5. Baker Baker
6. Wrong Band
7. Waitress
8. Cornflake Girl
9. Icicle
10. Cloud On My Tongue
11. Space Dog
12. Yes Anastasia

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6044 in Music
• Released on: 1994-01-31
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .23 pounds

Amazon.co.uk Review
Under The Pink was Tori Amos' follow-up to the sensationally successful Little Earthquakes and demonstrates that she had by no means run out of faeries and demons to sport with. Amos herself describes it as her "impressionistic" album--her piano playing is perfectly attuned to the subtle, shifting colours of her lyrical moods on "Bells For Her", while "Past The Mission" indicates her growing use of distinctive arrangements to illustrate her songs. Highlights include "God", in which Amos demonstrates her often-missed humour, openly taunting the Almighty for his indifference to humanity, asking "Do you need a woman to look after you?" --David Stubbs

CD Description
It's been a long time since an artist as quirky and defiantly personal as pianist-vocalist Tori Amos exploded upon the pop charts. With her debut effort LITTLE EARTHQUAKES, Amos avoided popular trends and convenient pigeonholes: all at once she evokes an era of thrush-like sopranos, folkish confessionals, and daring new wave artists. The resulting music on her second Atlantic release, UNDER THE PINK, is brimming over with innocence and sensuality, spirituality and heresy. That she is able to confront all of these contradictions, let alone try to resolve them, makes for remarkably powerful music.
In fact, UNDER THE PINK owes much of its potency to the feeling that we're watching Amos grow up before our very eyes. The daughter of a Methodist preacher, Tori Amos was a child prodigy on the piano, gifted with an exceptionally quick ear and a solid rhythmic feel. However, while pursuing her formal studies, she ran dead up against the rigidity of classical protocol, and her teachers tried to break her ratherthan channel her talents. Some of the emotional push and pull of this early artistic catharsis peeps through in the wayAmos and co-producer Eric Rosse approach the multiplicity of piano sounds which inhabit UNDER THE PINK--sounds which symbolise the many feminine rites of passage depicted throughout the album.
There are the child-like, half-remembered musings of "Bells For Her" and "Icicle" ("I think the good book is missing some pages"), and the vigorous attack of "The Waitress", "Cornflake Girl" and "God" ("God sometimes you just don't come through/Do you need a woman to look after you"). Here Amos' sense of alienation, rage and betrayal is echoed in offbeat rock textures and swooping vocal refrains suggesting the work of fellow traveller Kate Bush on THE DREAMING. Elsewhere, her vibrant vocal range and lush harmonies suggest early Joni Mitchell and even the ethnic-new age melangeof Enya. The characters in her songs, however, are neither flower children nor navel gazers, but strong, vulnerable women coming to terms with their needs and longings in an oftenchilly world. UNDER THE PINK maps the inner journey of post-modern women and signals the arrival of a singular new singer-songwriter.

Customer Reviews

Astounding in ambition, and in beauty
The pop sound of Little Earthquakes, and the big-selling singles, cast Tori Amos as a slightly unbalanced, fragile woman in an evil man's world. Under The Pink sees Tori regrouping and pushing ahead with a quirkier, more unique sound that owes less to conventional verse-chorus songwriting and the exorcism of her personal demons than her debut. Here, we get Tori the storyteller, leading us through tales of murder (Past The Mission), lost love (Baker Baker), female jealousy (The Waitress), and a number of quirky, off-beat songs that appear to owe nothing to anything other than Tori's vivid imagination.

Fortunately, this vivid imagination also extends to the songwriting, and in terms of musical invention, I think this is Tori's finest album. No need to play with keyboard effects and synthesisers like her later albums - this is pretty much Grand Piano only, with a band and string section backing her up through all except the haunting 'Bells For Her'. And although you can conceivably criticise Tori Amos for her lyrical "kookiness", you cannot fault anyone that makes playing piano so well sound so effortless. Although the album's key song (and hit single) was 'Cornflake Girl', this isn't where you find the long-lasting and haunting music. The range of musical expression across the closing four tracks, from Icicle to the classical-pop of Yes Anastasia, are worth the asking price alone and give more of an insight into the dark but beautiful world inside the head of the remarkable Tori Amos.

Under the Pink put me under Tori's spell
This is an important, amazing, complex album. The video for "God" introduced Tori Amos to me, and this album hooked me as a permanent fan of this incredibly gifted musician's work. I do have to admit that some of the song lyrics on here make very little sense to me, yet the beauty, power, and obvious insights of Tori's songwriting and singing still amaze me. Like every Tori CD, this one is quite different from her others. While the somewhat funky, beat-driven "God" is arguably the best song on the album, only "Cornflake Girl" has a similar kind of rock sound to it. "Past the Mission" is another more up-tempo song which seems to have a fullness to the sound that the majority of the tracks lack. There is a lot of soft piano music and tender, lilting singing on many tracks; on several occasions, you may think the album has stopped playing if your volume is turned down too low. The best example of this is "Icicle," which opens with two minutes of very soft piano music. In terms of the lyrics, "Icicle" is definitely the most interesting song on the album. You really have to read the liner notes to see what Tori is actually saying; the song is rather deliciously naughty and more controversial than the better-known "God." Several songs highlight Tori's ability to suddenly and effortlessly switch her sound and mood from soft and unaffecting to forceful and powerful, especially "The Waitress" and "Space Dog." "The Wrong Band" has a sort of jaunty melody and seems to deal with opening your eyes and facing reality. "Cloud on My Tongue" is a pleasant little number, and "Pretty Good Year" is an excellent song with which to begin the album. "Baker, Baker" strikes me as being the most emotional song, as it seems to address the problems of a failed relationship. "Yes, Anastasia" is a long, very soft song with which to close the album.

Every song on Under the Pink is enjoyable and meaningful in some way. I prefer the faster songs, so there are a few slower tracks I skip over sometimes when I listen to this CD. Tori's unusual style sometimes makes a few words hard for me to understand, and I find it very useful to refer to the included lyrics; the true poetry and power of the vocals is only increased when you can actually read them rather than just hear them. If you love Tori Amos, you already have this CD. If you are unsure about this artist, I recommend purchasing Little Earthquakes before purchasing Under the Pink because this album is more quirky and less accessible than her debut CD.

haunting

I am so glad that people below like this CD.

When I bought this CD back in 1994, people used to say her previous 'Little Earthquakes' was far better and this new CD was not as good, which spoiled my excitement to have met this great CD (well, I was 23 and fresh from Tokyo. I just thought I didn't comprehend foreign (to me) music).

After 13 years on, I still listen to 'Under the Pink'. When I play "Pretty Good year" "God" "Bells for her" and "Baker Baker", I feel there are no other songs resemble those songs. What an amazing originality. Most of pop songs sound out of date after a half year, but her songs will never go out of fashion - so I think.

"God sometimes you just don't come through .... Do you need a woman to look after you?"