Tori Amos has never been one to shy away from tackling major topics, and for many people “God” is one of the biggest. The lead single from her sophomore album Under the Pink, it became her first to hit Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart. The track strongly resonated with fans yet only peaked at No. 72 on the chart. Religious commentary is always a thorny subject in America.
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Challenging An Institution
Amos has always challenged conventional thinking from male-female relationships to religioius concepts that people define themselves by. It’s always been in her nature to rebel, whether against concepts and ideas invoked by her Methodist minister father or her once-classical overlords at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, who rescinded her scholarship when she was age 11 and asked her to leave for not following their rules. (They probably also didn’t approve of her straddling her piano bench as an adult performer.)
In a 1994 cover story interview with Creem magazine, Amos explained the genesis for the song “God.”
“There’s a division of power, male and female power, and there’s a division within my own being,” Amos said. “There’s been a dishonoring of us with each other, and us with ourselves, and women against women, and men against men, and women against men … and that’s how the song ‘God’ got written. The institutional God who’s been ruling the universe, in the books, has to be held accountable. I want to have a cup of tea with him and just have a little chat. I feel like the song is a releasing, a sharing. It’s honest and loving. And it’s sensuous. It’s the goddess coming forth and saying, ‘Come here, baby. I think you’ve had a bit of a rough job, and I don’t mind helping out now.’ Which I think is really cute.”
A Challenging Track
While piano and vocal-driven like a majority of Amos’ other work, “God” was also a full-band track. In one section, the singer’s cooing harmonies were juxtaposed with the screechy guitar sounds from Steve Caton, her former bandmate from her original ’80s group Y Kant Tori Read. Caton would record and tour with Amos throughout the ’90s, and his frequently ambient and experimental guitar tones, notably on her tours for her third and fourth albums, made for a wonderfully refreshing compliment to her performances.
For fans of her music and those engaged by more adventurous songs, “God” was tantalizing even just from a sonic perspective. Both Stereogum (in 2014) and the Guardian (in 2023) have listed it as her third-best song.
Alexis Petridis of the Guardian wrote: “Musically abrasive—at least by the standards of Amos’s piano-led early albums—with lyrics to match, the song upbraids Christianity, particularly the Catholic church, for its misogyny and what Amos has described elsewhere as ‘violent and hateful devotion.’ It’s angry, snarky, witty (Do you need a woman to look after you?) and absorbing.”
You make pretty daisies, pretty daisies love
(Come down and tell me what you mean, now)
I’ve gotta find, find, find what you’re doing about things here
(Huh, whatcha doing?)
A few witches burning, gets a little toasty here
(Hey now, what do you know, what do you know?)
I gotta find, find, find why you always go when the wind blows
Challenges on the Charts
As noted above, “God” peaked at No. 72 on the Hot 100 and spent 12 weeks on the chart. Given that Amos has many Gold and Platinum albums and has numerous songs beloved by fans, it might seem surprising the single did not go higher. Likely due to its religious content, the song was not played much on mainstream radio, although it soared to No. 1 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart.
In truth, singles have never been big drivers of Amos’ album sales, at least not in a conventional radio sense. The singer/songwriter has scored eight Top 10 albums in her career—including one Gold, three Platinum, and two Double Platinum releases—yet her highest charting song is “Spark,” which topped out at No. 49 in 1998. Her work is more album-oriented, as many devoted disciples will likely note. Videos, touring, and word of mouth always helped get the word out.
A Popular Staple
Certainly one of her most recognizable rock songs, “God” ranks eighth among her most performed song in concert, per Setlist.fm. And it clearly ranks high on a lot of lists of the best Amos songs.
Funnily enough, Amos herself was not originally sold on the concept, even though Caton was somewhat plugged into the alternative zeitgeist of the times; perhaps ahead of it.
“I remember Tori was out shopping that day with her friend and assistant at the time, Judy, and came back to find that I had introduced the Industrial Revolution meets The Twilight Zone into the potential single track on the album,” Caton told Virtual Guitar in 1999. “She was not initially won over. I think nervousness would best describe her first reaction. Later, this little part became a real point of concern. There was so much fear amongst the management and record company people that radio would not play the song in that ‘crazy, left-of-center state’ that [producer] Eric Rosse was instructed by someone at Atlantic Records to make several different mixes of the tune with varying amounts of The Dreaded Guitar Noise, the last mix being completely devoid of it. The different mixes were all put on a CD and sent to radio so the program directors could choose for themselves which version of ‘God’ they wanted to air. All the business people thought that the mix sans guitar would be the one. Of course, radio picked the one with the loudest noise guitar. A great moment for me. A vindication of sorts.”
And the song remains one of Amos’ best.
A nice footnote: In 2019, Amos gave the commencement speech at her childhood alma mater, the now-titled Peabody Institute of John Hopkins University. She began by saying, “I really should get a medal for crashing and burning because I failed a lot.” It all worked out in the end, “God” helping.
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Photo by Jason Kempin/FilmMagic
