National Female Vocalist

Tori Amos

Grand dame

It's appropriate that Tori Amos has been known to cover Nine Inch Nails songs live (check Napster for the MP3s): with a gift as corn-flaky and big as the persona she serves up in interviews, she's as obscure as The Fragile and as grand as The Wall. Speaking of double-live documents, her To Venus and Back (Atlantic) -- half live sprawl, half over-generous Tori on an in-studio roll -- was kind of a gift for those fans who make their own Tori-totem dolls (see last year's Spin cover story), and for them alone. But I'm partial to the part where she murders her inner waitress for upward of 10 minutes, and to "Glory of the '80s," where she promises to die and come back as Kim "Bette Davis Eyes" Carnes, hopefully ensuring that'll never actually happen.

-- Daniel Stuckey