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Tori Amos

American singer-songwriter (born 1963)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ193744
Source-derived summary

Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos; August 22, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range. A child prodigy, Amos entered the Peabody Institute's preparatory division at five, but left at eleven, coming of age as a pianist in Washington, D.C. bars. Amos was the lead singer of the short-lived 1980s pop-rock group Y Kant Tori Read before achieving her breakthrough as a solo artist in the early 1990s. Her songs focus on a broad range of topics, including sexuality, feminism, politics, and religion.

Her charting singles include "Crucify", "Silent All These Years", "God", "Cornflake Girl", "Caught a Lite Sneeze", "Professional Widow", "Spark", "1000 Oceans", "Flavor" and "A Sorta Fairytale". Amos has received five MTV VMA nominations and nine Grammy Award nominations, and won an Echo Klassik award for her Night of Hunters classical crossover album. She is listed on VH1's 1999 "100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll" at number 71.

Early life and education

Amos was born on August 22, 1963, at Old Catawba Hospital, in Newton, North Carolina during her parents' trip from their home in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. She is the third child of Mary Ellen (née Copeland) and Edison McKinley Amos. and was named Myra Ellen Amos.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Tori Amos” as american singer-songwriter (born 1963). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Tori, Amos and American.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1963, 1000, 1999—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1963-08-22. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Tori, Amos and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Tori Amos”, the useful work is to connect “american singer-songwriter (born 1963)” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q193744. VIAF identifies the subject as 2663685. The Library of Congress control number is n93066844. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963, 1000 and 1999.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Tori Amos”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Tori Amos primary sources, Tori Amos archive and Tori research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Tori Amos”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Tori Amos” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.