Songfacts®:

• "In Times of Dragons" is the title track of Tori Amos' 18th album, marking the moment its storyline takes off. Within the album's allegorical narrative, a fictionalized "Tori" escapes an abusive marriage and embarks on a journey, leaving behind her estranged daughter and the only world she has known.
• The dragon in the title is part of Amos' larger metaphorical world. At its center is the "Lizard Demon," a composite of powerful men associated with the authoritarian "Dark Enlightenment" movement, a billionaire class manipulating politics behind the scenes. In the song, the fictional husband calls himself "the Dark Enlightenment" and warns that he is "out for blood." Meanwhile, Tori wonders if she is transforming from "Beauty" into "the Beast." As the album unfolds, that transformation becomes literal: she eventually turns into a dragon herself.
• Amos deliberately chose allegory over a straight tell-all with names changed. "The Muses told me that the only way I could do it, where people could receive it, is through story and character," she told Uncut magazine. "So I had to put myself in a situation that wasn't my life exactly." She added: "To document something without being destroyed by that something is no small feat."
  
  That is sound advice for anyone attempting an autobiographical concept album involving dragons, if only to save on legal bills.
• The second verse shifts focus to another man entirely separate from the Lizard Demon. This "different Lover" is someone from decades past who "taught me things" and advised her to "think less of Crucifixion, more of Resurrection." He is also the father of her daughter, and "a damn good Father" at that. This section points directly to Amos' real-life marriage to sound engineer Mark Hawley and their daughter, Natashya "Tash" Hawley.
  
  The distinction is crucial: the tyrannical Lizard Demon belongs purely to the allegorical plot, while the "different Lover" represents the grounding, supportive relationship of Amos' actual life. In other words, not every husband in the story is a dragon-adjacent villain. Family life occasionally gets to actually be family life.
• Amos wrote and produced the track herself. She plays Bösendorfer piano and synthesizers, backed by Jon Evans on bass, Mark Hawley on guitars, and Matt Chamberlain providing drums, percussion, drum programming, and electronics. The track was recorded, mixed, and mastered at Martian AV Studios, Amos' home setup in Cornwall, England.
• The sessions reunited Amos in the same room with Chamberlain and Evans for the first time since 2009, bringing back the core rhythm section that defined much of her late-1990s work. Amos described the reunion as an intense, high-pressure environment. Referring to Chamberlain and Evans as her "music husbands," she explained how they tracked during the day while she wrote through the night, snagging a few hours of sleep in the morning, and then the band would track around four in the afternoon. The following day, Chamberlain would add percussion while Amos was already writing the next song.
  
  Amos intentionally used the presence of such seasoned musicians to push herself as a producer. "I was hoping that the pressure cooker of great musicians sitting around here was going to make me so nervous that I would have to produce – and that happened to work," she said. "That's a dangerous road to take as a songwriter, but I'm not a nine-to-five, go to my shed in the back garden and write every day person. That's not how I roll."
• Clocking in as the second track on the 17-song, 75-minute album, "In Times of Dragons" follows "Shush," where the Lizard Demon attempts to silence her and leads directly into "Provincetown," as her escape southward continues.