“Tori Amos’s Stretched Compound Grooves”

Volume 12.5 (September 2026)

Scott Hanenberg (Wilfrid Laurier University)

 

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Tori Amos has her own way of manipulating musical time. In this video essay, I show how Amos often stretches the meter of her songs by strategically adding subdivisions. My focus is on grooves that I hear in 6/8 time (compound grooves), with stretched measures of 7/8, 8/8, or further expansions. The demanding metric coordination in Amos’s stretched grooves is surprising in the radio-friendly genres that she is known for—one way among many that Amos plays with the line between pop and progressive.

Keywords: Tori Amos, groove, compound meter, irregular meter, popular music

 

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