Tori Amos

There’s a distinct thematic thread weaving through The Beekeeper, the latest opulent project from visionary keyboardist/vocalist Tori Amos. If only the scattered songstress could make up her mind exactly what it is. To begin with, she opens a rambling hourlong chat with a humble apology—all morning long, she’s been working furiously in her home studio, a 300-year-old barn on an estate in rural Cornwall, England. “Sometimes it takes me a minute to refocus, to gather my thoughts,” she explains. “Just so you know that and you don’t end up thinking, ‘Will she hurry up and talk?’ I’ve been mastering the record, and since November 2 [of last year], the album has taken a different turn, mainly because there were a couple of life-changing things that happened to me.”

Ask anyone who’s ever met the green-eyed, delicate-framed, flame-haired singer—Amos, 41, comes across as one of the sweetest, most environmentally concerned people on the planet. Sometimes awkwardly so. In 2002, when discussing her last effort Scarlet’s Walk—which explored her part-Cherokee heritage—she frequently broke into tears recalling all the Earth-revering Native American lessons our country has forgotten in two short centuries. The mother of a four-year-old daughter, Natashya, Amos cares so much it often hurts. So it’s no surprise when she gets choked up again over her recent painful epiphanies: “One was that we all had to face the reality of the next four years, and the choice. And then I lost my brother in a tragic car accident a couple of weeks ago.”

Bush’s re-election, Amos says, forced her hand, politically. She hastily added two new indictments to Beekeeper—“General Joy,” which references “a soldier girl and a willing coalition”; And a duet with Damien Rice, “The Power Of Orange Knickers,” which she intended as a statement “that violence isn’t the answer to everything, and using the idea of terrorism to get what you want—whoever you are—should be a thing of the past.”

Her sibling’s sudden passing at 50 hammered home the sheer brevity of life. “The idea of somebody being here one minute and gone the next is a reality to me right now, in a big way,” Amos murmurs. “So it could be a reality that all of us aren’t here one minute—as many past civilizations have come and gone, we could too. We all know the ice caps are melting. We all know the climate changes and these things that are happening.”