Tori Amos and Garbage’s Shirley Manson recently chatted for The Talkhouse podcast on the eve of the 20th anniversary re-issue of Amos’s “Boys for Pele” album. The two icons and long-time friends talked about “revisiting their younger selves and early work, the constraints society puts on aging women, the film Audrie & Daisy being a powerful teaching tool against sexual assault and the song Amos wrote for it, motherhood, and the patriarchy in the music business.” (Listen to the podcast below.)
Here are a few quotes from Manson and Pele’s discussion on The Talkhouse:
“I feel very frustrated. I keep wanting to say to the girls [trying to make it in music], ‘Listen, you can have a longer career if you keep those panties on!’… Unless you’re really incredibly smart and brilliant like Madonna was with your sexuality, don’t step into that pool… There’s a few women who carry [it] off. I think Rihanna is incredibly sexual and it’s exciting to me and powerful and somewhat threatening, and also intriguing. And somehow she manages to maintain that mystery by being incredibly sexual. But not everybody can play that game and carry it off like she can. So I think unless you can play in the pool with Madonna and Rihanna, keep your panties on.” – Shirley Manson’s advice to aspiring female pop stars
“We’re gonna tour next year, 2017, with a new record. We’re recording right now.” – Tori Amos announces new album and tour plans
“I hadn’t listened to Pele in a long time. You’re kind of forced — in order to do the remastering and get it ready — you’re forced to listen to yourself. And I have to tell you, there were moments I was listening to that record and I would think, ‘Wow, that girl is angry. She’s an angry person.'” – Tori Amos on revisiting Boys for Pele for the reissue
Amos is not merely “angry”. She is nasty, vindictive, mocking, evil. She is a study for young people on how NOT to be.