Benjamin

Album: Native Invaders (2017)
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Songfacts®:

  • In January 2017 Tori Amos' mother, Mary, suffered a stroke that left her unable to speak. The singer told Billboard that she experienced "a penny-drop moment" while driving to visit her, when it became clear that in the same way that her mother's body had been under attack, so also were such American ideals as freedom and liberty.

    This angry song in which Amos Tori Amos brands "the men on the hill" as "those pimps in Washington... selling the rape of America," became a central theme of Native Invader.

    "I'd been getting messages through people I know from people I don't know that were telling me that I needed to pay attention," Amos explained. "They wanted to know, did I know what as going on? Did I understand who was going to be appointed, for example, at the EPA? Those types of things. I call them the Benjamins, whether they're our lady Benjamins or the male Benjamins. That's the song 'Benjamin,' where I was getting pointed at and sent things to look at to make me aware of what was really going on. As I was sitting in the hospital with Mary, by her side for hours, I would be doing the research, and the album started to come fast and furious."

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