Question: Who has influenced you most in music, and what has become of that influence? Feel free to share your experience at length. Thanks for commenting!! This might be tough, so I might have to put it to vote. But, I will definitely be looking at the honesty of the answer.

Answer: I'm sure I'm not alone in this -- Tori Amos.  \n\n  Amongst my friends she's considered "uncool" (although having that cool/uncool mentality at my age, to me, is a little pathetic.)  But I've never once wavered in defending her.  \n\n  I'm agnostic, and her music is one of only a handful of things that vouch for the existence of the divine.  \n\n  Even you don't like her songs (or, a more common complaint, her voice), you just cannot deny that she is extrordinarily talented -- she was the youngest person ever to get into the Peabody Conservatory at the age of five.  Even though she comes from the very tired genre of the piano/vocalist/songwriter, her arangements, expression and voice manage to be wholy unique.  \n\n  And those controvercial lyrics.  \n\n"God sometimes you just don't come through/Do you need a woman to look after you?"  Or on the stranger side, \n"Rabbit, where'd you put the keys girl?" \n"Father I killed my monkey..."\n\n By listening to her music I was able to teach myself piano, an invaluable skill in my profession.
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