The Best Mixes Part II

In early 2002, I wasn't very happy. That whole New York thing had just happened, and my father had been diagnosed with the cancer which, by last August, would be too much for him. This was senior year of college, when I was also working on a thesis and therefore not going out much. It being Maine in winter, it seemed to be dark all the time. Enter my friend Josef, who sent many of his friends the same CD - a compilation of songs by people like Marianne Faithfull, Peggy Lee, Radiohead and Schubert. One song in particular struck me:

Time by Tori Amos

It's a Tom Waits song from her cover album Strange Little Girls. At the time I didn't know it was a Waits song, though now, especially after hearing the original so many times, its lyrics should have made that obvious. I played it over and over again, loving how her inflection is both emotional and completely resigned; how "it's time that you love" is both an ultimatum and a factual statement; how she hits the high notes with the same intensity as the others. Amos sounds like she's sedated and singing with the microphone in her throat.
By the time I actually did get around to hearing the Tom Waits version from Rain Dogs, it just wasn't the same. I'm sure if I heard his original first, the story would be different, but I had fostered an attachment to Amos's version that couldn't be replaced. Like the rest of the songs on Strange Little Girls, Amos is singing a song that a man wrote, and it works here as well as the other songs on her album, which range in style from Eminem's Bonnie and Clyde '97 to I Don't Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats.
You can buy Strange Little Girls here, and Rain Dogs here.