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Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos
In April of 2007, when Virginia Tech became the site of the worst school shooting in U.S. history, Adrienne Trier-Bieniek was a graduate student finishing a master’s degree in the school's department of sociology. In the months that followed, Trier-Bieniek sought ways to deal with her heartache and sense of loss. As she had many times before, she turned to Tori Amos's music as a guide for healing, using the songs as channels for her grief. Amos’s style of introspective songwriting often focuses on women’s experiences. Among other themes, her songs frequently tackle encounters with grief and loss, as well as violence against women, miscarriage, the degradation of the earth and sexual liberation. Using this music to facilitate her own healing led Trier-Bieniek to consider how other women had used Tori Amos’s music as a means to heal after trauma. Knowing that many women had turned to Amos’s music after an assault, or to help them heal from things like eating disorders or the loss of a child, Trier-Bieniek began to research women’s encounters with music in general and Amos’s music in particular. This exploration led to a landslide of information regarding the ways women are represented in pop culture, particularly the gender stereotypes of female fans.
The result of this study is “Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos.” Released on June 16, 2013, this book explores the many-layered relationships female fans build with feminist musicians in general and with Tori Amos, in particular. Using original interview research with more than forty fans of Tori Amos, multiple observations at Amos’s concerts and an analysis of Amos’s lyrics, Adrienne Trier-Bieniek employs a combination of gender, emotions, music, and activism to unravel the typecasts plaguing female fans. Trier-Bieniek aggressively challenges the popular culture stereotypes that have painted all female fans as screaming, crying teenage girls who are unable to control themselves when a favorite (generally male) performer occupies the stage. In stunning contrast, admirers of Tori Amos tend to be more reflective. Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman examines the wide range of stories, exploring how Amos’s female fans are unique because Amos places the experiences of women at the center of her songwriting and musical composition. The result? A legion of female fans whose experiences with assault, eating disorders, miscarriage and other traumas have left them hunting for music that will help them rebuild -- and in Tori Amos's songs, they find it.
At a time when superficial women dominate public media presentations, from the Kardashians to the “Real Housewives,” the relationship between Tori Amos and her fans illustrates the continuous search by women for female performers who challenge patriarchal standards in popular culture. Trier-Bieniek’s research shows that women want to see their identity reflected in the women who dominate pop culture. Academically, “Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman” will serve as a contribution to research aimed at gender, sociology, feminist methodology, pop culture, social psychology, emotions, culture, women’s studies and health/healing.
*******************************
Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, PhD is the author of the forthcoming book “Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos”, which is available for pre-order on Amazon. She studies emotions and music as well gender stereotypes in pop culture. Adrienne is a professor of sociology at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. www.adriennetrier-bieniek.com
The result of this study is “Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos.” Released on June 16, 2013, this book explores the many-layered relationships female fans build with feminist musicians in general and with Tori Amos, in particular. Using original interview research with more than forty fans of Tori Amos, multiple observations at Amos’s concerts and an analysis of Amos’s lyrics, Adrienne Trier-Bieniek employs a combination of gender, emotions, music, and activism to unravel the typecasts plaguing female fans. Trier-Bieniek aggressively challenges the popular culture stereotypes that have painted all female fans as screaming, crying teenage girls who are unable to control themselves when a favorite (generally male) performer occupies the stage. In stunning contrast, admirers of Tori Amos tend to be more reflective. Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman examines the wide range of stories, exploring how Amos’s female fans are unique because Amos places the experiences of women at the center of her songwriting and musical composition. The result? A legion of female fans whose experiences with assault, eating disorders, miscarriage and other traumas have left them hunting for music that will help them rebuild -- and in Tori Amos's songs, they find it.
At a time when superficial women dominate public media presentations, from the Kardashians to the “Real Housewives,” the relationship between Tori Amos and her fans illustrates the continuous search by women for female performers who challenge patriarchal standards in popular culture. Trier-Bieniek’s research shows that women want to see their identity reflected in the women who dominate pop culture. Academically, “Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman” will serve as a contribution to research aimed at gender, sociology, feminist methodology, pop culture, social psychology, emotions, culture, women’s studies and health/healing.
*******************************
Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, PhD is the author of the forthcoming book “Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos”, which is available for pre-order on Amazon. She studies emotions and music as well gender stereotypes in pop culture. Adrienne is a professor of sociology at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. www.adriennetrier-bieniek.com
- GenresNonfictionMusic
186 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
2 people are currently reading
219 people want to read
About the author
Adrienne M. Trier-Bieniek
6 books16 followersAdrienne Trier-Bieniek, PhD is a sociologist and qualitative researcher whose primary interest lies in the impact pop culture has on shaping ideas about gender. Her writing on Tori Amos’s fans has been featured in the journals Qualitative Research and Humanity & Society as well as in the book The Art of Social Critique, edited by Shawn Bingham, and has been featured as a guest columnist for The Orlando Sentinel. Adrienne is currently editing the forthcoming book Feminist Theory and Pop Culture and is the co-editor, along with Patricia Leavy, for the forthcoming book Gender and Pop Culture: A Text-Reader, both to be released from Sense Publishers. She has been a guest on Power Talk Radio and she is a regular contributor to the websites “We are the Real Deal” and “The Survivor Manual”, which aim to help people heal from eating disorders and sexual assault, respectively. Adrienne is currently a faculty member at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida where she lives with her husband and dogs and can be found at www.adriennetrier-bieniek.com.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 28, 2025
I remember when the author promoted the release of this book, an adaptation of her PhD thesis in sociology, in the same Tori Amos Facebook groups she had used to recruit the forty-something subjects she interviewed for the work a couple years prior. At the time, I was writing my own master thesis in psychology, and as a massive Tori Amos fan at the height of my fandom, I was very interested. Unfortunately, with both the physical and digital (!) copies costing around $50, I was priced out of reading it for almost a decade… but I’ve now finally picked it up ahead of Tori’s new tour.
Trier-Bieniek, a big Tori Amos fan herself, posits that in the patriarchal music industry, female fans are stereotyped and marketed to as hysterical fangirls of (typically) male performers—think Beatlemania, Beliebers, or the BTS ARMY; women who channel their inner screaming teenage girl, regardless of their age. The aim of her thesis was to challenge this restrictive cultural stereotype, and instead focus on the multi-layered relationship female fans build with the music of female singer-songwriters, centered on the example of Tori Amos, who is known for her devoted, rabid fan-base. Female fan culture is often overlooked in studies of music and fandom, and Trier-Bieniek hoped to widen the scope of future research: In this book, female Tori Amos fans are given the spotlight, and the author explores how they relate to Amos’ body of work and her as a person, and makes the case that engaging with this kind of introspective music about the female experience can be an important catalyst for healing, empowerment, and feminist activism.
There were a lot of things I didn’t like about this book; it sure could’ve used a proof-reader; it was riddled with mistakes, sentence structures that made no sense, and a lot of repetitions of the same ideas. I fully admit that this is a bias stemming from my having studied psychology, which prides itself in quantitative research, but I also really don’t vibe with qualitative studies of this kind: Due to the qualitative approach, parts of the interviews Trier-Bieniek conducted were quoted verbatim, and I found it pretty jarring to go from her well-sourced, scholarly paragraphs on sociological theories to conversational quotes by her interviewees in which she’d seemingly kept every interjection—it resulted in a lot of sentences padded with bits like “you know, it’s like, yeah“, and the constant back and forth in writing style made for some arduous reading.
Something that kept coming up and rubbed me the wrong way was a pervasive animosity towards Britney Spears, who was used as the “superficial pop star” stand-in that Tori’s music had to be contrasted to. Her name was mentioned surprisingly and suspiciously often, for all the claims of it being unprompted, which makes me wonder why this small sample size of mostly self-professed feminists all felt that it’s okay to pit women against each other in ways that got pretty vile on a few occasions. Considering this work prides itself in being a study of how Tori’s music shapes feminist identity and ideology in her listeners (and it’s worth noting that Tori had voiced support for Britney prior to Trier-Bieniek conducting this research), it seems that something crucial about the particular message of women betraying women, which is a common theme in Tori’s music, didn’t quite reach the audience of mostly middle-aged cis white women interviewed here.
While I could deeply relate to a lot of the things the interviewees spoke about—how Tori’s music took on a very personal, therapeutic meaning in their lives, and how they bonded first with her work, then with other fans, and even Tori herself, ultimately finding their own voices and (feminist) identities on the way—this was overall a huge let-down, and I wouldn’t suggest anyone drop $50 to get their hands on a copy.
Trier-Bieniek, a big Tori Amos fan herself, posits that in the patriarchal music industry, female fans are stereotyped and marketed to as hysterical fangirls of (typically) male performers—think Beatlemania, Beliebers, or the BTS ARMY; women who channel their inner screaming teenage girl, regardless of their age. The aim of her thesis was to challenge this restrictive cultural stereotype, and instead focus on the multi-layered relationship female fans build with the music of female singer-songwriters, centered on the example of Tori Amos, who is known for her devoted, rabid fan-base. Female fan culture is often overlooked in studies of music and fandom, and Trier-Bieniek hoped to widen the scope of future research: In this book, female Tori Amos fans are given the spotlight, and the author explores how they relate to Amos’ body of work and her as a person, and makes the case that engaging with this kind of introspective music about the female experience can be an important catalyst for healing, empowerment, and feminist activism.
There were a lot of things I didn’t like about this book; it sure could’ve used a proof-reader; it was riddled with mistakes, sentence structures that made no sense, and a lot of repetitions of the same ideas. I fully admit that this is a bias stemming from my having studied psychology, which prides itself in quantitative research, but I also really don’t vibe with qualitative studies of this kind: Due to the qualitative approach, parts of the interviews Trier-Bieniek conducted were quoted verbatim, and I found it pretty jarring to go from her well-sourced, scholarly paragraphs on sociological theories to conversational quotes by her interviewees in which she’d seemingly kept every interjection—it resulted in a lot of sentences padded with bits like “you know, it’s like, yeah“, and the constant back and forth in writing style made for some arduous reading.
Something that kept coming up and rubbed me the wrong way was a pervasive animosity towards Britney Spears, who was used as the “superficial pop star” stand-in that Tori’s music had to be contrasted to. Her name was mentioned surprisingly and suspiciously often, for all the claims of it being unprompted, which makes me wonder why this small sample size of mostly self-professed feminists all felt that it’s okay to pit women against each other in ways that got pretty vile on a few occasions. Considering this work prides itself in being a study of how Tori’s music shapes feminist identity and ideology in her listeners (and it’s worth noting that Tori had voiced support for Britney prior to Trier-Bieniek conducting this research), it seems that something crucial about the particular message of women betraying women, which is a common theme in Tori’s music, didn’t quite reach the audience of mostly middle-aged cis white women interviewed here.
While I could deeply relate to a lot of the things the interviewees spoke about—how Tori’s music took on a very personal, therapeutic meaning in their lives, and how they bonded first with her work, then with other fans, and even Tori herself, ultimately finding their own voices and (feminist) identities on the way—this was overall a huge let-down, and I wouldn’t suggest anyone drop $50 to get their hands on a copy.
February 1, 2018
Originally posted elsewhere on May 16, 2016
Since 1991 Tori Amos' music has helped countless fans heal, grow older with a shred of dignity and a ton of humor, and the book spells this all out clearly from a feminist perspective -- something many reviewers through the decades have missed. I cannot fathom missing how someone who wrote Boys for Pele would be seen as anything other than a feminist, the woman that first spoke and gave the tagline from Silent All these Years to/for RAINN. So many things are addressed in this book that it's impossible to list them all, and I will be reading it again, but I thought I should rate now or I'll forget.
The feminist perspective in the research itself. Adrienne Trier-Bieniek's reasons for her methodology are clear and easy to read, and they lend themselves to the subject of Tori's music. There's a nice dance being done here between author and subject matter. The long insistence that we female fans are all little girls with fairy wings, and the men are all gay is so silly and outdated as to be pathetic, but sadly it stuck. Then there’s the competing “angry woman” thing. Notice how they only want to see one thing at a time? Why can’t you be both angry and love delving into myth?
Tori has always been an excellent lesson in embracing one's shadow. Too often women and our full selves are quartered off and taken bit by bit, as if woman as whole person is just too hard. Loads of pop culture has taken that shape, and it's frustrating and more troubling: harmful. To write anything but love songs and happy pop songs is somehow "difficult" or "too angry" or “whiny.” The author is clear on that in her thesis, so the book dives right past that nonsense.
My own thinking, which is not at all original, is that some press are either lazy or unable to open themselves to the real work. Everything is there in the music. An intelligent, open, emotionally-involved talent who doesn't have 10 press people speaking in soundbites for her is rare. Reviewers and interviewers were lazy and the lie was born. This author knows how to hear, and the book is well-written precisely because of that. Also, she probably wanted her doctorate ;) From the first words, it's clear this author is an writer with an ear for music. However, it's not written from a "fangrrl" perspective. The eye is on the research and the lessons taken from what she heard and learned from the fans interviewed along with other resources.
On a personal note, I adore Tori Amos still after all these years and all the albums. Anyone can write a "female anthem" but to have a career spanning decades based on the intricacies of being *human* is a feat . Adrienne Trier-Bieniek looks at the give and take from woman to women and back again and spins a compelling narrative about how and why this all works so well.
Since 1991 Tori Amos' music has helped countless fans heal, grow older with a shred of dignity and a ton of humor, and the book spells this all out clearly from a feminist perspective -- something many reviewers through the decades have missed. I cannot fathom missing how someone who wrote Boys for Pele would be seen as anything other than a feminist, the woman that first spoke and gave the tagline from Silent All these Years to/for RAINN. So many things are addressed in this book that it's impossible to list them all, and I will be reading it again, but I thought I should rate now or I'll forget.
The feminist perspective in the research itself. Adrienne Trier-Bieniek's reasons for her methodology are clear and easy to read, and they lend themselves to the subject of Tori's music. There's a nice dance being done here between author and subject matter. The long insistence that we female fans are all little girls with fairy wings, and the men are all gay is so silly and outdated as to be pathetic, but sadly it stuck. Then there’s the competing “angry woman” thing. Notice how they only want to see one thing at a time? Why can’t you be both angry and love delving into myth?
Tori has always been an excellent lesson in embracing one's shadow. Too often women and our full selves are quartered off and taken bit by bit, as if woman as whole person is just too hard. Loads of pop culture has taken that shape, and it's frustrating and more troubling: harmful. To write anything but love songs and happy pop songs is somehow "difficult" or "too angry" or “whiny.” The author is clear on that in her thesis, so the book dives right past that nonsense.
My own thinking, which is not at all original, is that some press are either lazy or unable to open themselves to the real work. Everything is there in the music. An intelligent, open, emotionally-involved talent who doesn't have 10 press people speaking in soundbites for her is rare. Reviewers and interviewers were lazy and the lie was born. This author knows how to hear, and the book is well-written precisely because of that. Also, she probably wanted her doctorate ;) From the first words, it's clear this author is an writer with an ear for music. However, it's not written from a "fangrrl" perspective. The eye is on the research and the lessons taken from what she heard and learned from the fans interviewed along with other resources.
On a personal note, I adore Tori Amos still after all these years and all the albums. Anyone can write a "female anthem" but to have a career spanning decades based on the intricacies of being *human* is a feat . Adrienne Trier-Bieniek looks at the give and take from woman to women and back again and spins a compelling narrative about how and why this all works so well.
October 15, 2013
Really fantastic topic--the only reason that I didn't give it 5 stars was because this book could have used a good proofreader, as many of the mistakes are unfortunately distracting from the book's overall message. Interviews with fans are the most interesting segments of the book.
March 24, 2014
Great scholarship here not only on Tori Amos as an artist but on female fan culture. Trier-Bieniak's articulation of female fans helps reframe stereotypes of women and fan studies. I appreciated the sociological approach to the topic.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews