Pop
Tori Amos saw a 'huge vagina in the sky' when she covered Slayer
Tori Amos has revisited the inspiration behind her notorious Slayer cover and discussed how social media has changed the way female artists are heard.
Tori Amos says her infamous Slayer cover came from a vision of a “huge vagina in the sky”.
The 62-year-old pop rock star has doubled down on the wild, visceral imagery that fuelled one of the most talked‑about covers of her career - her reimagining of Slayer’s Raining Blood.
Amos - who recently released her 18th studio album In Times of Dragons - says the idea wasn’t shock for shock’s sake, but a direct strike at the systems she felt were holding women back.
She told Classic Rock: “Covering that was a message for the patriarchy, especially back in 2001. My concern for women then, and now, was having so few freedoms, so few rights, and being controlled by a type of poisonous state.”
Amos said the song triggered a vivid, symbolic image that shaped her entire approach.
She said: “When I heard Raining Blood I had a vision of this huge vagina in the sky that was dripping blood everywhere, like the elements were rising up to combat this force of malevolent patriarchal force.”
And despite the intensity of her interpretation, Slayer themselves were all in.
She recalled: “[Slayer] sent me a fabulous box of T-shirts for that. They were so lovely about it [laughs].”
Amos also reflected on how much easier it is now for women to speak directly to fans without being filtered through the old industry machine. “
She said: "Because of social media, yes. Before, gatekeepers made it difficult to get to the public. Radio wasn’t necessarily my best friend, neither was MTV."
Amos added that the journalists who did give her space were the ones willing to tackle real issues: “They wanted to talk about things like the inequalities that were happening to female artists being put out to pasture once they were thirty-five years old.”
