Promise

Album: Unrepentant Geraldines (2014)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song finds Tori Amos duetting with her 13-year-old daughter, Natashya Hawley, as they reflect on a mother-daughter relationship from both perspectives. Tash previously sung for her mother on four songs ("SnowBlind", "Cactus Practice", "Job's Coffin" and "The Chase") on Amos' classically-inspired 2010 album, Night of Hunters.
  • The song includes plenty of references to the struggles that plague teenage girls including embarrassing mothers. Amos told Jam! Music: "The song came from mothers and daughters kind of having an honest chat about stuff and yes, that includes girls doing whatever (on film, in videos, on the net, in live performances) and coming to a place where we don't have to agree with something or like something. This is (from) a woman though who nursed a pig."

    "What I'm saying to you is, 'In life, do you do things that are shocking or do you do things that are subversive,'" she added. "In my life I want it to be about subversive. I didn't want to shock to shock for shock's sake."

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