you for a while

Music and Lyrics by: Tori Amos

Instrumentation: Vocal, Acoustic Piano, Sampled Strings, Guitar

Brief Summary: Leather is most often interpreted to be about unrequited love…but with a twist. While the person “Tori” loves doesn’t much love her in return, he continues to use her–playing on her emotions. Through singing Leather, the singer begins to figure this out (i.e. “Why am I here? If love isn’t forever…”). She begins to pick up the steam of self-confidence and self-worth as the song goes on–”But why do I need you to love me, if you can’t hold what I hold dear?” At the end, she decides to leave, “Hand me my leather and I’m outta here, man.”

Tori’s Comments: (from the Little Earthquakes songbook) “A hole opens sometimes that I fall through a bit like the Mad Hatter. I guess where memories coughing in loose molecules come and chase me around for a while. I felt like I had lived 20 different lifetimes from birth through death during the writing of this song. When I looked up from the piano and at the clock, thinking I was late for someone, it had only been 8 minutes.”

Fan Comments/Interpretations: While Leather can be seen as pretty straight-forward, some fans struggle with the “weather” part. Someone on songmeanings.net offered that in asking if its the weather causing her problems, Tori is trying to pass it off as “maybe its just the weather”–something we as a society tend to do. But, alas, she realize that its not simply the weather, that the guy is just never going to “get her” and she’s off.

China2Ny’s Comments: Leather always makes me smile…Tori has a way of doing this, making a really cute upbeat song with intensely emotional lyrics. The piano solo in the middle always amazes me. I love seeing Tori Amos play Leather live, she always seems to have so much fun with it.