The meaning of the lyrics Silent All These Years by Tori Amos
Tori Amos is a dynamic performer, a brilliant songwriter, an accomplished pianist, and a cool, cool woman. But sometimes deciphering the lyrics to her poetic songs can be a puzzle, especially her Silence all these years lyrics.
I am a huge fan of Tori Amos and have done my best to synthesize the Silence all these years lyrics. Here’s a bit of history, and the lyrical analysis I came up with…
The Song was released as the second single from Amos’ first studio album. small earthquakesalthough he wrote it long before when he was recording And I can’t read Tori. In 1992, it was picked up in the UK by RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) to promote awareness of the organization, and was reissued in the US in 1997. Tori claims that the song is not completely autobiographical because she wrote it to place him with another artist at the time. (Songwriters often do this when they’re starting out.)
In my opinion, however, the song is biographical in a non-literal sense because it is about an artist giving up her voice or her essence as a woman. This interpretation is supported by the fact that Tori was lyrically inspired by Hans Christen Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” in which a mermaid gives up her voice to ensnare a prince. As an artist who was trying to “make it” by pitching songs to other artists to sing, I think it’s reasonable to assume that Tori was this token woman giving her voice to someone else.
A more literal and completely different, but not necessarily autobiographical, interpretation could be that the singer has just learned of an unplanned pregnancy, and is forced to relinquish her voice or essence during the agonizing yes-or-no decision-making process. . to abort Perhaps the singer has been on “Silent All These Years” because she feels ashamed of having aborted it, added to the shame of not having spoken about the emotional pain it caused her all these years.
Here are some lyrical references that I think support this interpretation:
“The Antichrist in the kitchen” is one of her parents yelling at her, and she is “saved by the garbage truck” because she is now exposing her emotional “garbage” or mess by confessing these experiences through song.
“Boy, you better pray she bleeds real soon”… telling her lover she might be pregnant.
The “paper cup” could be a pregnancy test.
“Years go by, I’ll choke on my tears” may refer to the singer’s suspicion that she may live to regret an abortion later in life, even if it’s the only solution at the moment.
Whether or not you agree with my literal and non-literal interpretations of Tori Amos’ “Silent All These Years” lyrics, it’s hard not to agree that it’s an intriguing, multi-faceted song.
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