I always forget (since I listen to mp3s) how striking the cover is.

Pose in glamorous outfits and stare into the distance for no reason? Bore me to tears. Squish your face in a copy machine and call it an album cover? You've got my attention!

I hink the cover is absolutely fantastic and I feel like it captures the sound of the album well. All wild and dark and mysterious and oddly beautiful. Choirgirl took me a while to warm to but my goodness a large amount of her best work is on this album. I think she was at the top of her game around this period. Her live performances were perfect, so effortless and quite refined but full of passion. I think it's up there with the best; I don't rank her albums but this has to be up there.

I wish she would do something gritty and sexy like that again. I like the music of the last few albums alright but I've been sorely disappointed with the album artwork. I seriously want mud on the next album. I would pay big bucks to see tori covered from head to toe in mud.

Brilliant album. My very first. http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...lies/smile.gif

And by golly the absolute BEST collection of b-sides from any one album of her entire career.

I love the photo shoot that was done in the dark blue lighting. Goth Tori was so hot...

From the Choirgirl Hotel
 

http://991.com/newGallery/Tori-Amos-...gir-112550.jpg

TORI AMOS
FROM THE CHOIRGIRL HOTEL
(ATLANTIC)
Released: May 1998
Chart: UK No.6 / US No.5

• Spark
• Cruel
• Black-Dove (January)
• Raspberry Swirl
• Jackie's Strength
• iieee
• Liquid Diamonds
• She's Your Cocaine
• Northern Lad
• Hotel
• Playboy Mommy
• Pandora's Aquarium

Non-album b-sides:

• Bachelorette
• Do It Again
• Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
• Purple People

The songs usually dictate what I’m going to do. When they started coming, I was trying to get through a bad patch. I was pregnant at the end of the Pele tour, and was very... we were over the moon about it. And I miscarried at almost three months, and it was a really difficult time. So the songs started coming not long after I miscarried. The strange thing is, the love doesn’t go away for this being that you’ve carried. You can’t go back to being the person you were before you carried life. And yet you’re not a mother, either, and you still are connected to a force, a being. And I was trying to find ways to keep that communication going. Along the way on the search, sort of walking with the undead, I would run into these songs. The one thing they kept saying to me was I had to find a deep woman’s rhythm. You’re sort of in no man’s land as a woman having carried life but lost it - and yet you’re still alive. I was pregnant and I miscarried at almost three months last Christmas. But people thought that was a subtext to the record, and they were getting this so wrong that I decided to talk about it. I just wanted to really have the pregnancy and not rush into doing more music, but when the miscarriage happened, the songs just started to come. I went through many different stages. I couldn’t be the person I was before I carried life, but I’m not a mother, so I was in no man’s land. But there was still a deep connection to this being; the soul and the love doesn’t go. This record is about life force. http://www.yessaid.com/pic/cgh-57.jpg


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_____

My second favorite album by Tori. This one and SW are always fighting for the nuber one spot, but SW won. http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/wink.gif

The only song that I don't enjoy on this one is Jackie's Strength. Otherwise, it's top-notch. Liquid Diamonds, Cruel, Hotel, Black-Dove and She’s Your Cocaine are among my favorite songs by anyone.

Just a great album. What more can I say?

This is my second favorite Tori album, after Boys for Pele. I became a fan right around the time this was released (spring of '98, so i would have been a junior in high school). I remember seeing the "Spark" video on MTV late at night and thinking, "This chick is pretty weird." Then a couple of friends of mine kept talking about how much they loved Tori and they each lent me copies of BFP and UTP...then I went out and bought FtCH. I listened to it all summer and really tried to figure it out. It was a bit more "hardcore" and "dark" than my tastes were used to at the time (I was a big Lilith Fair fan)...so I think I credit Choirgirl with expanding my horizons and opening me up to harder-sounding music.

I love every single song, I think it's sequenced perfectly, the videos are all perfect...really, this is the perfect Tori album. I still love Boys for Pele more, though, just because it's more raw.

My favorite record by anyone. I love the material from this era.

My favourite album by anyone. Ys comes as a close second. Brilliant production, lyrics, and the ambient. And it has balls. And probably because of stupid sentimental reasons i ascribe to it.

I think it is my favorite cover/inlet artwork.

It always has a special place in my heart. It's one of those albums that for me defines a certain period of my life.

This is Tori at her peak. Marrying piano and band sound to perfection, being a rock-chick yet still a thoughtful singer/songwriter, big sounds and initmate moments. And brilliant brilliant b-sides!!!
Classic.

I remember pestering the guy in the music department of the big box store I worked at all day long. "Did you unpack it yet? did you find it yet? where is it?"

I really liked it at first listen. Except for Cruel. I don't really like that one, although I really like the lyrics. I'm getting so I can tolerate it though since the 07 boots, whereas I used to skip it unconditionally. Hell, I didn't even bother to import it to my first computer that I used with iTunes because my hard drive space was so limited.

My favorite song is Raspberry Swirl. I love the remixes, especially the Lip Gloss version. I think it's the best of the official remixes and way better than that Prof Widow we always get. Yes, I know it was a big hit, but stop cramming it down our throats! And of course, fantastic tour, giving us TVAB disk 2. I think I have all the singles from this album.

And as someone said in one of the other threads, why, oh why, doesn't she play iieee any more??

I only really love two Tori albums, and this is one of them. I bought a promotional copy (stamped "NOT FOR SALE") from a used CD store. I was in love at first listen.

Definitely in my top 2 records of all time by anyone. The other would be Depeche Mode's Ultra album. The time it was released was a tumultuous time for me, and I was going through a ton of changes and emotions. It couldn't have come out at a better time. I really bonded with that album like no other. It inspired me so much in so many ways. It provided a means to new relationships that hadn't been there before. It was an outlet for me where I was able to say, hey listen to this song, this is how I feel right now. Every TV performance was quirky, weird, and exciting. And the tour was mind blowing. I hate I only got to see her once on the Plugged' 98 tour, but grateful I did nonetheless. I think Choirgirl was Tori's peak in terms of creativity, production, lyrically, and emotionally.

I remember when Tori was a guest on Letterman, and she had done Spark. It was an obsession because it was so different from what she had done before. I bought this the day it came out. I sat in my living room with the stereo turned way up and I was just hooked. While, my favorite songs from this record change often. Spark is the one that really resonates with me the most.



SisterE

Really nice "Jackie's Strength" from Letterman, July 27, 1998



And the map!


http://www.yessaid.com/pic/mapbig.jpg

Choirgirl is pure magic. It has this primal, gritty darkness that I haven't heard from any other artist. Spark, Black Dove, Hotel & Playboy Mommy are particularly spectacular highlights.

Not too crazy about Jackie's Strength either, it just kinda stuck out for me as not really fitting with the rest of the mood, it also drags a bit. Raspberry Swirl felt odd too, but more fitting as it seems to go together with She's Your Cocaine.

There's so much to love about that cover, it's very other worldly, like a dark world filled with water and music. The flatness of the garment like a cutout for a collage, the way it doesn't quite look like her as though it was taken underwater, the lost found parts of her body with her head completely disconnected, it's all very murky in there, the hair all over like it's underwater. Pressed up against something like she's trapped.

Water also seems to be a big theme for this album, Liquid Diamonds, Hotel, Pandora's Aquarium all give me that feeling of singing from below.