you for a while

Music and Lyrics by : Tori Amos

Instrumentation: Drums, Bass, Guitar,Pedal Steel, Kurzweil, Bose & Vocals

Brief Summary: After Boys for Pele, all of us Tori fans were more eager than ever for her next full length album. What was taking her so long? Certainly she was riding a wave of pure inspiration after the Come Back Inn tour ended. We expected the new songs to pop out of her Bose like gumballs and have a new album within months. C’mon already!! Eventually, From the Choirgirl Hotel did come out, but as Tori started making rounds in the media circus (television, magazines, radio, etc.) we all learned that Tori had been battling some pretty serious demons after the Boys for Pele tour ended–that she had endured several painful losses that very few people on this planet truly ever understand. Tori Amos, the one who had given us a new outlook on life with her lyrics, the one who had given us all that she had and wanted nothing in return, the one who deserved nothing but good things in life suffered a series of unexplained, heartbreaking miscarriages. I won’t go into much more detail, she’s spoken about these personal tragedy’s in great detail in her book Piece by Piece…

…But it was these personal tragedies that laid the groundwork for Tori’s most powerful ballad to date: Playboy Mommy. In this song she speaks candidly and directly to the babies she lost, expressing a few of the dozens of emotions women who’ve experienced miscarriage feel: guilt (”my baby came before I found the magic how to keep her happy”), anger/rejection (”those angels can’t ever take my place”), and and longing (”but I’ll be home to take you in my arms”).

In expressing these emotions and in describing the day of the miscarriage so vividly, Playboy Mommy is one of Tori’s most personal songs. She doesn’t hide behind metaphor in this song–she lays her heart and soul out there for all of us to see, touch, hear, and smell. Along with Me and a Gun, Playboy Mommy is as big of a glimpse into Tori’s personal life as we’ll ever get. And all of us fans appreciate her for it.

Tori’s Comments: “…Bad things don’t happen to good people? That’s a painful lie, and it hits you on such a core level. I know now that I have an appreciation for the miracle of life that I didn’t have. But I don’t believe in the saying that it all happens for the best… it’s just not appropriate.”

Fan Comments/Interpretations: Fans get the meaning of Playboy Mommy the first time they hear it. It kind of smacks you in the face. But people are drawn to it for various reasons. A lot of folks really grab on to the “Playboy Mommy” metaphor and discuss it at length on forums. Did Tori view herself like that because of her fame? Was she trying to step away from it a bit and tell it from the point of view of a character? Or did it have a more personal meaning…afterall, early in her career, dumbass journalists did refer to her as a bimbo. Was she referencing her past? As with all of her songs, only Tori truly knows.

China2Ny’s Comments: My favorite version of this song is the one she released on A Piano. Just here and the piano…and you can tell she’s still trying to find the right lyrics. I enjoy this glimpse into Tori’s creative process and the even more intense, raw emotion in her voice. It makes me feel closer to her…but not in a creepy way, I swear!