Songfacts®:

• "Ode to Minnesota" is Tori Amos's direct response to Operation Metro Surge, a Department of Homeland Security operation that deployed roughly 3,000 federal agents into the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area between December 2025 and February 2026. The fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, along with the death of Victor Manuel Diaz in ICE custody, became major flashpoints in the debate over federal immigration enforcement policies.
• Amos wrote the song at the absolute tail end of the In Times of Dragons sessions. So late, in fact, that there was barely time to squeeze it onto the tracklist.
  
  "'Ode to Minnesota' came when we were in mixdown," Amos told Uncut magazine. "And I went to Mark, my husband, and said, 'I've got to keep recording.' There was a 24-hour window, that's how close to the bone we came. Sometimes they [the songs] just take over. It's an agreement I have with the Muses that they can possess me, but you have to also be aware of that energy field... you have to be protective."
• "Ode to Minnesota" ended up displacing another track Amos had been working on called "Denmark," which was inspired by diplomatic tensions over Greenland.
  
  "Minnesota is a sea change," Amos explained. "Greenland, that was terrible, what was going on there, but that was a distraction. As a songwriter, with so many things popping up on a daily basis, sometimes you have to recognize where your focus needs to be right now. 'Ode to Minnesota' came and said: your focus needs to be here, because this is how we, the people, are reacting to a 'law enforcement' anomaly - we resist this type of force."
• Amos views In Times of Dragons as a historical document, though she resisted making a dry political record. Instead, she channeled real-world tension into a broader mythological story, asking what happens when everyday people living through dark times are forced to tap into their inner strength and "turn into a dragon."
  
  Amos also explored her lifelong relationship with these creative spirits in her 2025 children's book, Tori and the Muses.
• On the album, "Ode to Minnesota" sits right between "Gasoline Girls" and "Annie Fawdrey." Its placement acts like a sudden, urgent news bulletin: while much of In Times of Dragons frames its political commentary through a fictional story about "Tori" and her "Lizard Demon" husband, "Ode to Minnesota" steps completely outside the fantasy to address headlines in real time.
  
  That documentary instinct is nothing new for Amos. She told The Sun that a major part of her life's work is "documenting time," pointing to her 1992 debut Little Earthquakes (which captured the emotional fallout of her failed synth-pop group Y Kant Tori Read), her raw tracks addressing her 1996 miscarriage, and 2002's Scarlet's Walk, which mapped post-9/11 America.