“My mother says I was two-and-a-half when I started playing. My father was a minister, and when he went to church in the morning, she would put on Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Cole Porter records. I'd crawl up on the piano stool, sit on a phone book and play.”

American singer-songwriter and pianist

Tori Amos is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. A classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano voice, she began as a child prodigy and later came of age as a pianist in Washington, D.C. bars. She first drew attention in the 1980s as the lead singer of the short-lived pop-rock group Y Kant Tori Read. Amos achieved her breakthrough as a solo artist in the early 1990s. Her songs often address sexuality, feminism, politics, and religion, and her work is marked by the combination of piano-driven music and personal, often provocative themes.