you for a while

Music and Lyrics by: Tori Amos

Instrumentation: Vocals, Acoustic Piano, Strings

Brief Summary: Tori has said that Pretty Good Year was written in response to a letter she received from a Brit named Greg in which he wrote something to the effect of “my life is over…I can’t figure out what you girls want…you want to much…and I’m tired of trying.” As Tori had read a lot of letters like this from young men over that period of time, she was inspired to write Pretty Good Year, as a way to say, “Yeah, dude, it sucks for you, but get over it…all in all, its still a pretty good year.”

Tori’s Comments: (from the Under the Pink songbook) “Mountain biking became a major event in my life for a week, the mud was so thick on the tires we got there just in time to feel the mountain thaw, the sound when these two merged was something like ‘thclulpleekooh’ I said on an intake of breath with no lips moving and no throat usage, I like this word and I liked the idea of the eternal footman saying ‘asta’ on a mountain bike.”

Fan Comments/Interpretations: Some fans have stated that Pretty Good Year, for whatever reason, brings them closure. And a lot of ‘em have picked up on the irony of the “burns his CDs” line…in 1994 there was no CD burning technology, but you did burn CDs to destroy them. Whether Greg is sitting in his room burning illegal copies of Tori CDs or sitting in his room destroying all of them…the line still seems to make sense.

China2Ny’s Comments: I walked down the aisle to the String Quartet version of Pretty Good Year on my wedding day. Thats how much I like this song.