Welcome to Introverted but Willing to Discuss Tori Amos — the podcast for quiet thinkers, deep listeners, and anyone who has ever had a life moment soundtracked by a Tori Amos song.

On Episode 3, Kristen, Matt and Joey discuss something that lives somewhere between ritual and road trip: Tori Amos on tour.

Because a Tori tour isn’t just a series of concerts — it’s a living, breathing, moving cultural conversation. Songs shift, setlists breathe, old tracks reappear in new emotional colors, and every night becomes its own little universe.

Whether you’ve followed Tori across cities and continents, caught a single unforgettable show, or watched the magic unfold from afar, touring is where the songs evolve — and where the stories begin.

So in true introvert fashion, we’ll ease into it: the anticipation, the travel, the setlist surprises, the quiet community that forms in theater seats around the world, and what it feels like when those first piano notes hit the room and everything starts to vibrate.

Tonight, on the eve of the In Times of Dragons world tour launch, we pre-game our version of the Super Bowl: Tori Amos on tour!

On our 2nd episode of season 3, we have the pleasure and privilege of being joined by the one and only Rod Thomas, better known as the iconique Bright Light, Bright Light, an artist, songwriter, producer, and DJ who has released five studio albums since 2012, his most recent being the UK top 10 selling Enjoy Youth from 2024.

While being a fully independent artist, he has recorded with some of the music's biggest names, including Sir Elton John, Scissor Sisters, Justin Vivian Bond, Erasure, Madonna's backing singers, Nikki and Donna, and Ultra Naté.

He has also toured the world as the opening act for Elton, Erasure, Ellie Goulding, and queen icon legend Cher. His love of 80s and 90s pop culture shines in his cinematic, colorful dance pop music, his remixes, and his DJ sets ranging from his weekly tea dance in New York City to Prides around the world and prestigious US institutions, MoMA and the Smithsonian.

Most importantly, he is a self professed and very public Toriphile! And there's truly no one better than to deep dive Tori's fascinating and seemingly contradictory, but perhaps ultimately fitting relationship to electronica, synth pop and the strange boundless world of the remix. Welcome, welcome, Bright Light Bright Light.

For our Season 3 premiere we are going to zoom in on Tori’s relationship to cinema. I (Matt) have always been inspired by the movies, movies are my earliest memories. They were my first love, my longest relationship and for a long time, my bread and butter.

On our season 2 episode featuring JPS JV asked him how he would describe Tori’s music. We see Tori as a great auteur, someone who creates worlds that are cinematic and immersive. In that respect, she is like the Martin Scorsese of singer-songwriters: a director who can handle any genre thrown at him, but still retains a certain quality that is unmistakably his and his alone.

To be this kind of artist, at minimum, you have to at least know yourself inside and out and Tori proved with Little Earthquakes that she could articulate everything that was inside of her mind, her heart, her bones. She did this so early in life that she allowed herself the creative freedoms to blend those worlds for the rest of her career, and explore narrative and character in a way very few singer-songwriters have. She became a sonic character actress sure, because she played all of the roles in her songs herself, but, in our view, she truly became a sonic auteur. The listener can see these stories visually as they experience the music sonically.

Today we are cataloguing and contextualizing Tori Amos many dalliances with cinema, so no please join us as we launch Season THRAY.

A wise man (not really, it was just Matt Mazur) once said "Tori Amos invented sex," and in this season finale, we’re proving it. Whether she's falling in love in the snow or commanding the piano bench, Tori knows how to turn it up a notch. We’ve got a "DTF" playlist ready for you to enjoy the winter chill that bends. We’re introverted, we’re obsessed, and we’re ready to discuss the steamier side of Tori Amos.

One Night Stand: TA DTF playlist

There’s not just one Tori Amos.

There’s the mystical Tori. The one who whispers and stirs your soul with a single, dramatically drawn breathy sigh. Ethereal and enchanted. Imagine her as a church choir girl sun, faerie moon and a mermaid rising if you’re into astrology.

Then there’s the sensual Tori. The one who moves like honey, undulating on the piano bench, eyes half-closed, turning her microphone into a… lover. Desire and divinity inhabit the same body, and she always finishes on top. ;)

And then there’s the Tori who bares her teeth, growls, screams, and slams the keys. You have seen this tori in various forms. She’s the one who famously performed a song about her own assault while gripping a knife on stage.

This Halloween, as the veil between worlds grows thin, we’re calling on that Tori– the one who kicked out the lady in the white shirt (does she fucking mind?). Because Scary Tori isn’t a costume. She’s a force of nature- part witch, part warrior- and she’s on a mission. This Tori channels something ancient through her piano and what she finds might even surprise her at times.

So today, in honor of the season of shadows, we’re talking about Scary Tori: the power that makes you flinch… and then lean closer.

We are honored to have a producer, composer, arranger, multi-instrumentalist, musical visionary in our presence. He's worked alongside some of the biggest legends in music history, and he also happens to be Tori Amos' longtime write or die right-hand man across many decades and many projects. Most recently, this dynamic duo collaborated on the wildly whimsical soundtrack that accompanies the New York Times best-selling children's book Tori and the Muses, please welcome our friend, the maestro, John Philip Shenale.

We've heard you love our list making so we're coming at you with yet another list. This time it's the big one. It's our top 10 favorites list. NOT our best of, NOT our underrated. It's our favorites. So tonight you're in for real treat as we unveil our top tens alongside John Philip Shenale, who will be sharing his top 10 Tori Amos tracks that he did not work on. Maybe with a twist. We'll see.

Our favorite top 10 Tori Amos songs:

• JPS
• JV
• KK
• MM

In this episode, we open the mailbag and dive into your burning questions. Will there be a 2026 tour? Is a new album on the horizon? We share our takes, speculate wildly, and cover the topics you most wanted to hear about.

We’re doing things a bit differently as we welcome our very first guest for a very special episode, where we’ll attempt to scratch the surface of Tori’s complicated relationship with the media over the past three decades. We’ll explore not only how she’s been represented (and misrepresented) by an often unforgiving and unflattering press, but also the ways in which Tori’s intuition and perceptiveness allowed her to have the upper hand, talking circles around and discomfiting her inquisitors, and making clear that she wouldn’t back down from her ideals or be silenced by patriarchal standards - way before it was cool or safe or, let’s be frank, not potentially career-ending to do so.

Helping us to tackle this red-hot topic is a written and literal voice many of our listeners will be familiar with, both from the at once provocative and positively silly podcast Pot Psychology and his writing in The New York Times, Pitchfork, The Washington Post, Spin, Jezebel, and Gawker, among other publications. He also co-authors Slate’s sex advice column How to Do It. A true raconteur and renaissance man - Rich Juzwiak!

Rich's latter day playlist made with love by Joey, Kristen, and Matt
Recent Pitchfork reassessment of Boys for Pele (2025)
Q Magazine “Hips. Lips. Tits. Power." (1994)
Rolling Stone review of Boys for Pele (1996)
Rolling Stone cover story (1998)
Tori on Roseanne’s talk show (1998)
Tori on Rosie O’Donnell (1999)
Tori on the Daily Show (1999)
Tori on The View (1999)
Rolling Stone Beekeeper review (2004)
Stylus review
THR Full Oscar Songwriters Roundtable featuring Tori Amos, Justin Timberlake, John Legend, Alicia Keys, Sting (2016)
Rick Beato interview (2024)