"Cornflake Girl"

Tori Amos
(Atlantic, 1994)

The explicit fun and implicit challenge of listening to Tori Amos has to do with peeling away the layers of meaning buried inside her highly imaginative, phenomenally abstruse lyrics. "Cornflake Girl," from her second full-length, Under the Pink, is no exception. What makes the song one of her best isn't just the elastic, jazzy swing of the arrangement, which features an ornate latticework of instrumentation -- mandolins, guitars, and what sounds like a winter storm of sleigh bells swirling around Amos's exquisite piano fills. Much of its appeal and power has to do with the feeling you get that, despite the sly asides and veiled confessions about "hangin' with the raisin girls," you somehow know what she's talking about: identity and social acceptance, being an outsider amid the cruel cliques of adolescence. Or maybe it's just about breakfast cereal.

-- Jonathan Perry