Tori Amos’s Cornwall home has been invaded. “I’ve got a pirate road crew in the live room,” she chuckles as rehearsals for 2026’s 66 shows begin. Now in her 60s (“I’m not in my 60s, I’m 59 plus three”), the daughter of a preacher man first played professionally in Washington bars as 13-year-old piano prodigy: “DC’s in my DNA,” she says. Since Little Earthquakes, her groundbreaking debut of 1992, Amos, has evolved into one of great, era-straddling songwriters, even as she’s taken tangents into classical, seasonal, children’s and covers albums. With 2011’s Night Of Hunters she became the first woman to enjoy a simultaneous Top 10 US classical, alternative and rock album.
Out now, the swashbuckling In Times Of Dragons is Amos’s 18th album and finds her exploring the terrors of modern times via a mesmerising suite of musical parables (you can read MOJO’s four-star review of the record HERE). MOJO’s John Aizlewood spoke to Amos from her home in Cornwall about the record, the horrors of Trump’s America, and the art of the perfect sandwich…
On this tour, you’re taking backing vocalists out for the first time.
I had a three-octave range, but my voice has changed, so you adapt or collapse. Why let my vocal instrument becoming smokier be a pejorative? To do some of the catalogue, I’ve cast angels. They’re not dancers, but they soar with those melodies.
You say In Times Of Dragons, is about ‘the struggle for democracy over tyranny’. It’s tragic it’s come to this in 2026.
Oh yes. I couldn’t have imagined I’d have to do this now, but little did I know that certain groups had plans to infiltrate America. You’re either called to address these things or you’re not. I was. There are a lot of Americans in trauma right now, going, ‘how did we end up here… how are we in this war?’ I’m Tori in the album’s story, but I’m married to a demon lizard-king billionaire, who’s based on real people behind the scenes in America right now. I can't say who they are.
Why not?
Because I don’t look good in orange.
Was Mark, your actual husband and soundman, unnerved to find you wedded to a demon lizard-king billionaire on the album?
Oh, Mark went with it. What unnerved him was the love story with Lugh Of The Long Arm. He said, ‘as long as he doesn't show up at our door, we're good’.
Speaking of family, your daughter Tash co-wrote three In Times Of Dragons songs and sang backing vocals on four.
She’s in her last year of DC law school doing criminal law. She flew into our place in Florida and it was so natural. As the sun set, she drank Aperol spritz and I had a Chard, we sat down at the piano, she pressed record and we wrote Veins, Strawberry Moon and Stronger Together. I forgot about them for a while, until she sent them to me: a Eureka! moment.
You’ve lived in Cornwall since the mid-‘90s. Are you feeling Cornish yet?
I'm finally getting some of their humour after all these years. Finally. For so long, everything went over my head...
Your father was a minister, gods abound in your music, but how are you and God?
Growing up in the church I saw how patriarchal religion instilled shame as its currency and that guilt, that shame and that judgement which gnaws at you is on the new record’s St Teresa. It’s a slow burning at the stake and it’s there on Blue Lotus, but I’ve always had time for Jesus. The Sermon On The Mount is Christ consciousness and his sentiments always resonated with me, like a folk poet who had a point of view, say Leonard Cohen or Nick Cave.
You’ve spoken about taking sandwiches seriously. What’s your current speciality?
Shrimp salad, with dill, celery, rocket, pepper and Hellmann’s vegan mayo. Once you’ve washed – really washed – the shrimp, the trick is to drench it in lemon before you add anything. Of course, you have to toast the bread and, of course, that bread has to be sourdough.
Tell us something you’ve never told an interviewer before.
Fuck off. I’ve never told an interviewer to fuck off before… but how I’ve wanted to.
In Times of Dragons is out now via Universal/Fontana. Tori Amos plays the London Royal Albert Hall on April 21.
This article appears in the latest edition of MOJO. Also starring: Joni Mitchell's 50 Greatest Songs, Emmylou Harris, Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, Bruce Springsteen on Shane MacGowan, Paul Weller on Billie Eilish, Elvis Costello interviewed by Jeff Tweedy, and more! More info, and to order a copy for delivery wherever you are HERE!
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