New Wax Wednesday

Tori Amos is the type of artist who relishes pushing the creative envelope at practically every turn, and she went all-in by creating 12 separate character identities/personas for how she approached interpreting the dozen, male-penned covers she tackled on her September 2001 release on Atlantic, Strange Little Girls. A 62-minute tour de force of nature, Strange Little Girls has never been officially released on vinyl — but Rhino plans to rectify that ill by dropping a 2LP expanded edition of it on February 20, 2026, one that will also feature a pair of B-side rarities along with an additional pair of previously unreleased recordings.

The 2LP Strange Little Girls (Expanded Edition) presents the original album’s 12 tracks on its first three sides (four songs apiece), while the pair of B-sides and two unreleased covers are all represented on the fourth side. The B-sides are Amos’ covers of David Bowie’s “After All” and Alice Cooper’s “Only Women Bleed,” while the two unreleased tracks that had been left over from the recording sessions are her runs through Bruce Springsteen’s “Growin’ Up” and Elvis Costello’s “Hoover Factory” (the latter track being a non-LP B-side to EC’s 1980 “Clubland” single). You can check out Amos’ throaty take on “Growin’ Up” via its official YouTube clip, directly below.

Given Amos’ original, unique approach to this project, I’m totally cool with the fact that Strange Little Girls (Expanded Edition) is being made available in 12 different covers, each one of them showing a different character she embodied on the album’s core tracks — which, as briefly noted above, turned each song’s narrative around from their initial male POVs into female perspectives. Since all 12 personas were on display individually on the foldout panels of the original CD’s accompanying booklet — booklets that themselves came with different front cover offerings — this idea seems like a logical extension of the original design concept to me.

Just in case you were wondering, my copy of the 2001 Atlantic CD [7567-83486-2] sports Amos’ beret-wearing, cigarette-holding “Raining Blood” persona on its front — the one that was designated as the “fourth” cover option. This shot was accompanied inside the CD booklet with this telling quote across its bottom half: “Actually, the Gestapo picked her up.” (The “Blood” persona is duly shown below, this time in its upcoming LP incarnation.)

While we don’t have all the Strange Little pressing-related stats in hand at the moment, we do know that prior, Rhino-helmed 2LP reissues from Amos’ catalog (such as those for January 1992’s Little Earthquakes in 2023, and January 1994’s Under the Pink in 2021) have been pressed at Optimal, with lacquers cut by the always excellent Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios. So, given Amos’ penchant for sound quality — most especially when it comes to vinyl — I expect a similar SQ footprint here, and it’s probably gonna be on 180g wax as well. (If we get confirmation one way or the other, I’ll update that information accordingly.)

The SRP for each Strange Little Girls 2LP set is $39.98 apiece, or you can do the mondo-bundle thing and order all 12 variants together for (yep!) $479.96. At present, you can preorder whatever option(s) you want, and in any combination, directly from Amos’ official site shop here, or at Rhino’s official site shop here.

I know firsthand just how important vinyl is to Amos because she and I discussed that very concept in some depth during an interview we conducted by phone on February 26, 2015, while we were talking about that year’s Atlantic/Rhino 1LP reissues for both Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink.

“I’m open to audiophiles and people who love high-quality sound — those who really care about the sound,” Amos told me. “We’ve been doing vinyl over the last few projects because we love it. It’s really important to us.”

My natural followup Q: Why is vinyl important to you and your team? “Well, it adds a quality to the work,” Amos continued. “It’s just another layer. I find it really beautiful to listen to. It’s nostalgic for me, because I grew up listening to vinyl. That was my first way in — how I listened to all my favorite records.”

And those records would be? “One of my favorites is probably [Led] Zeppelin II,” Amos confirmed about the mighty Zep’s seminal second studio LP that was released on her then-label, Atlantic, in October 1969. “Yet there were many records that I would go from — many different styles, like Joni Mitchell’s [June 1971 LP] Blue album to The Beatles’ Abbey Road [released in September 1969]. There are many different records that I would listen to in those days, just to listen to how people made records.”

Some additional stats now via the official press release, along with the usual MM additives. To bring the Strange Little Girls concept to life, Amos collaborated with renowned makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin, who helped transform her into 12 different women, each with her own backstory. Photographs of those characters appeared in the original liner notes, along with their stories in brief quotes, and those are the images that appear on the 12 variant LP covers.

Amos recorded the album at her Martian Engineering studio in Cornwall, England, and was joined by some of her longtime collaborators — drummer Matt Chamberlain, bassist Jon Evans, guitarist Adrian Belew, and arranger John Philip Shenale among them.

Amos chose a diverse group of songs to cover, and she delivered some truly unforgettable, haunting interpretations here. Eminem’s “’97 Bonnie & Clyde” (LP1, Side 1, Track 2) transformed into a chilling spoke/sung monologue of maternal rage, while her reimagining of Slayer’s “Raining Blood” (LP2, Side 1, Track 3) emerged as a slow, eerie meditation. Eerie and affecting also describe her takes on Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” (LP1, Side 2, Track 4) and most especially The Beatles’ “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” (LP2, Side 1, Track 4) — the latter of which carries added weight at the moment, here in the wake of the 45th anniversary of John Lennon’s unwarranted death by gunfire on December 8, 1980.

Amos will be touring the UK and Europe starting in Spring 2026, in support of her upcoming 18th studio album, In Time of Dragons, which is also slated for a 2026 release. (More details on this intriguingly titled forthcoming LP, of course, once I get them from her team.) The tour kicks off on April 8, 2026, in Sheffield, UK, and wraps on May 30, 2026, in Vilnius, Lithuania. If that Eurocentric run strikes your fancy, you can check out all of Amos’ tour dates here.

While I can’t yet comment on the SQ of the Strange Little vinyl until I hear it for myself, I can easily rate the Music at a 9 (some of it goes up to 9.5, and even 10). I’ll let Amos’ own words carry us to the end here, led by her response to my Q about how satisfied she is with the way her music has been represented on vinyl.

“The records you hear, whether you like them or not, you can blame me for, because I was fighting all the time that the songs were represented in the right way,” Amos explained. “The music was always first. People know that I fight for the art, and the music. I’m not going to back down. If I’m wrong, I’ll back down. But I’m not going to back down.”

That final assertion sure sounds like the key declaration of a similarly named Tom Petty song that would sure make for one helluva future A-level Amos B-side. In the meantime, let’s all plan to get a little more Strange together in February — whaddya say?

TORI AMOS
STRANGE LITTLE GIRLS (EXPANDED EDITION)
2LP (Atlantic/Rhino)

LP1, Side 1
1. New Age – Originally by The Velvet Underground
2. ’97 Bonnie & Clyde – Originally by Eminem
3. Strange Little Girl – Originally by The Stranglers
4. Enjoy The Silence – Originally by Depeche Mode

LP1, Side 2
1. I’m Not In Love – Originally by 10cc
2. Rattlesnakes – Originally by Lloyd Cole & The Commotions
3. Time – Originally by Tom Waits
4. Heart Of Gold – Originally by Neil Young

LP2, Side 1
1. I Don’t Like Mondays – Originally by The Boomtown Rats
2. Happiness Is A Warm Gun – Originally by The Beatles
3. Raining Blood – Originally by Slayer
4. Real Men – Originally by Joe Jackson

LP2, Side 2
1. Growin’ Up – Originally by Bruce Springsteen *
2. Hoover Factory – Originally by Elvis Costello *
3. After All – Originally by David Bowie **
4. Only Women Bleed – Originally by Alice Cooper **

* Previously unreleased
** Previously released as B-sides only