Hounds of Love

I have no problem admitting that back in the early 90's when I was in high school in small-town Michigan, I was a huge drama club/choir nerd. I ran through the halls singing show tunes with my friends. I wore mom jeans and XL 10,000 Maniacs t-shirts. The popular kids at Flushing High School thought I was a total reject and threw insults and spit wads and french fries at me in the cafeteria, but among the band geeks and thespians, I was pretty well-liked. They helped get me nominated for Homecoming Queen my senior year, but I lost to a gaggle of cheerleaders and rich girls.

Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that I was a big Tori Amos fan. Little Earthquakes was my jam - I memorized all the words to every song and practiced my best warbly soprano in my pink-wallpapered bedroom. I was loyal to TORI until my early 20's, when I moved to California and started getting into more indie stuff. My love for her slowly turned to hate. Eventually I couldn't stand listening to the albums that I loved so much as a teenager, and I sold all her cd's and replaced it with what I thought was more respectable at the time - Belle And Sebastian, Pulp, Apples In Stereo, etc. The final nail in the coffin came from working at Dimple Records in Sacramento. A coworker of mine was completely obsessed with Tori and would play her cd's every day that we worked together, on average of 3 times a week. She talked about Tori obsessively and eventually got a tattoo of her sitting on a magic mushroom with faerie wings outstretched behind her flaming red tresses. Whenever she thought something was really cool she would squeal "OH MY GOD THAT'S SOOOO TORI!" One day she discovered that Tori Amos pretty much ripped off her entire steez from Kate Bush and then tried to convince me that Kate was the second greatest singer-songwriter that ever walked the Earth (behind TORI, natch) I hated Kate Bush. I couldn't separate her from Tori.

This Kate hatred (Katetred) endured. A couple of years back I had a boyfriend who was really into her, and would send me links to videos of girls twirling in misty meadows to "Wuthering Heights' just to irritate me. While sitting in his room, he would sneak one of her songs on, and it would take about 5 seconds before I would yelp "Ugh KATE!!! Turn this shit off NOW!!"

Needless to say, I've been shocked to discover very recently that somewhere deep within me, a KB superfan has been lurking. I listened to Wild Nothing's cover of Cloudbusting and realized it's a total jam. I downloaded Hounds of Love and liked it. Before I knew what hit me, I downloaded all of her early stuff and became totally obsessed. I finally was able to admit that Kate is pretty great. Tori Amos can totally suck it for depriving me of years of Kate Bush fandom. I will never forgive her or that farie-winged-magic-mushroom-Tori-tattooed bitch from Dimple Records.