Talk:Strange Little Girls

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[edit] Personae

#7 is told from the POV of "the female personification of Thanatos, or Death". Is this Neil Gaiman's Death? (But her Greek name was "Teleute" in Song of Orpheus.) Possibly Gaiman's accompanying story answers this; can anybody that has the album check? (If there's no clear answer, then we probably don't need to search the Net for speculation, plentiful as this is likely to be.) -- Toby Bartels 03:18, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Though Tori was used as the model for the character of Death in his book "Death: the High Cost of Living," Amos (nor Gaiman's writings on the subject) does not shed light on any specifics. She is simply meant to be a female personification of what is typically thought to be a male achetype.

Tori more closely resembles Delirium than Death, but according to those pages neither is actually based on her. IIRC, the visual inspiration for Death was a goth model who went by the name of 'Cinnamon' (though her makeup owes a lot to Siouxsie Sioux).

I think this article's description of the album's 'reinterpretations' is somewhat misleading. For instance, her version of 97 Bonnie and Clyde preserves the original killer's-POV lyrics ("She was bein mean to dad and made him real real mad/But I still feel sad that I put her on time-out...") and characterising this as "from the point of view of the dying wife" is just confusing.

I think the idea is that this is the Mom hearing these things. She's hearing the Dad tell his child all this stuff and she is powerless to stop his warping influence. A problem with that is the song continues after she's in the water so I got the sense it could be the Mother's spirit or something hearing them. To be honest it made more sense to me for it to be from the daughter's POV with the listener of the song being in the same position she's in. (Well sort of) Still that's not how she indicated as she meant it to be from the Mother's POV, everything I've heard on the song she's consistent on that. A possibly specific example is that parts of the song sound "watery", for lack of a better word, as the mother was thrown in the water. Anyway whatever it is it's one of the spookiest songs I've ever heard. (I don't listen to metal though so that might not say much)--T. Anthony 15:03, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

She may well have been putting herself in these characters' heads as she recorded these songs, but for the most part there's nothing in the songs themselves to tell the listener that they're hearing (e.g.) a German vaudeville performer. Gaiman's snippets in the album liner do hint at these personae, but they still don't offer anywhere near the level of specific detail that this article gives them.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say something like "Amos has indicated in [source] that these songs were sung from the following personae"? --Calair 01:48, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

T. Anthony is absolutely right: "I think the idea is that this is the Mom hearing these things. She's hearing the Dad tell his child all this stuff and she is powerless to stop his warping influence." and with that said I deleted the following line from the album description: "Sung from the point of view of a father who disposes of the corpse of his ex-wife while accompanied by his four-year-old daughter, the song was both disturbing and humorous." I deleted it not only because it was incorrect (it was the mother's POV, not the father's) but also subjective by saying "disturbing and humorous." Personally, I've never found the song to be humorous.--Pisceandreams 14:12, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Track Listing Links

The song titles are active links to articles that bear no relationship to the songs themselves, e.g., "Time" links to an article about the concept of chronology, and "Real Men" to a crappy John Ritter film. This should be cleaned up. Beeeej 19:24, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I fixed 2 of the links. I don't know if there's a different (better) way to do it, but I had to list the track as "New Age (Velvet Underground song)" in order for it to properly link. Also, I had to list "Heart of Gold" as "Heart of Gold (song)". If anyone knows how to properly link those without having to include the extra wording, feel free to change it. I removed links for track #2,7,and 12 since there are not Wikipages for those original songs.--Pisceandreams 14:02, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

The tracks need to be pipe linked, which I've done here. --PEJL 14:08, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh, cool. Thanks, PEJL. I learn a new Wikipedia-ism every day. --Pisceandreams 01:44, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! And I've just removed the link for #6, which also has no Wikipage. Beeeej 23:47, 6 August 2007 (UTC)