Tori Amos’s rendition of “Time”, originally written and performed by Tom Waits, is a haunting, elegiac reinterpretation that showcases her extraordinary ability to breathe new emotional dimensions into existing works. Included as the most striking cover on her 2001 concept album Strange Little Girls, Amos’s version strips the song down to its most vulnerable core and lingers there, gently unraveling its bittersweet beauty.
Where Tom Waits’s original is gravelly and weatherworn, filled with a melancholic street-poet’s lament, Amos trades grit for fragile introspection. Her voice floats above a delicate piano arrangement - bare, reverent, and mournful. This minimalist setting allows every word and note to land with clarity, and her interpretation is drenched in a quiet ache, as if she’s bearing the weight of each memory the song conjures. Tom Waits's lyrics range from thought provoking to downright bizarre ("She pulls a razor from her boots / And a thousand pigeons fall around her feet").
The version on Strange Little Girls - an album built around reimagining songs originally written and performed by men - is more than a cover; it’s a reclamation. By reframing “Time” through a female perspective, Amos reshapes its narrative from one of wistful observation to something more intimate and quietly powerful. The silence between notes, the nuance in her vocal tremble - these choices turn the song into a whispered confession in the dark.
Tori Amos’s “Time” is an exquisite meditation on loss and longing. Poignant, stripped down, and emotionally resonant, it closes Strange Little Girls with a sense of graceful melancholy. In her hands, Tom Waits’s composition becomes something ethereal and intensely personal - proof of her unmatched talent as an interpreter and emotional alchemist.
Where Tom Waits’s original is gravelly and weatherworn, filled with a melancholic street-poet’s lament, Amos trades grit for fragile introspection. Her voice floats above a delicate piano arrangement - bare, reverent, and mournful. This minimalist setting allows every word and note to land with clarity, and her interpretation is drenched in a quiet ache, as if she’s bearing the weight of each memory the song conjures. Tom Waits's lyrics range from thought provoking to downright bizarre ("She pulls a razor from her boots / And a thousand pigeons fall around her feet").
The version on Strange Little Girls - an album built around reimagining songs originally written and performed by men - is more than a cover; it’s a reclamation. By reframing “Time” through a female perspective, Amos reshapes its narrative from one of wistful observation to something more intimate and quietly powerful. The silence between notes, the nuance in her vocal tremble - these choices turn the song into a whispered confession in the dark.
Tori Amos’s “Time” is an exquisite meditation on loss and longing. Poignant, stripped down, and emotionally resonant, it closes Strange Little Girls with a sense of graceful melancholy. In her hands, Tom Waits’s composition becomes something ethereal and intensely personal - proof of her unmatched talent as an interpreter and emotional alchemist.