When a remixed versionof Tori Amos's song “Professional Widow” reached number 1 in the UK singles chart in January 1997, it de-throned a saccharine tune by the Spice Girls, “2 Become 1”. The contrast between the two songs is stark: while the Girls sweetly tell their boy, “I need some love like I never needed love before”, Amos declares, “Slag pit / stag shit / honey bring it close to my lips.”
Amos’s chart placing must have left her feeling vindicated: it arrived while she was engaged in the fight of her professional life. The singer and virtuoso pianist’s third album, Boys for Pele, which featured the original versionof “Professional Widow”, met fierce resistance from some critics, who variously labelled it “exasperating”, “pretentious” and “self-indulgent”. The 18-track collection — recorded in a rural church in Ireland and performed primarily on harpsichord and piano — was lyrically denser and musically less accessible than the two crowd-pleasing albums that had preceded it.
Although it wasn’t one of Pele’s initial singles, journalists zeroed in on “Professional Widow” during promotional interviews with Amos, focusing on its explicit lyrics and war-cry vocals. The song is one of the album’s most energetic numbers: it features a driving harpsichord riff, bass guitar and a percussion loop that includes a sample of an Irish farmer shovelling manure in a field next to the church.
“That's my cornerstone song, my Lady Macbeth,” Amos said at the time. “It's my desire to be king, to have what the big boys have, and giving up my femininity and vulnerability to taste it.”
The cryptic lyrics, which also reference suicide, Christianity and heroin (“Mother Mary / china white / brown may be sweeter / she will supply”), fuelled feverish speculation among music fans: was the titular villain Courtney Love, the rock musician who had recently lost her husband Kurt Cobain? Not according to Amos. “I've never met Courtney Love,” she said. “It's based on that part of myself that’s Lady Macbeth, and if you have any Lady Macbeth in yourself ... that song can be about you.” Rumours of a feud between Amos and Love persisted, but both singers have spoken respectfully about each other in the years since.
During the summer of 1996, a “Professional Widow” remixby Boston-based producer Armand Van Helden — issued as a double A-side single with the ballad “Hey Jupiter” — caused a stir in US clubs and on the terraces of Ibiza. Commissioned with Amos’s blessing, the new version was a club thumper that centred on the sped-up and looped “Honey bring it close to my lips” refrain over a 4/4 beat and an addictive bassline. Although it retained much of the strangeness of the original, Van Helden’s version artfully incorporated the hedonistic vibe that dominated dance music at the time. In late July, the remix topped Billboard’s Hot Dance Club Play chart in the US; five months, later, in December 1996, it was reissued as a single in the UK.
Supported by radio requests from clubbers, the remix quickly became ubiquitous in Britain. The public appetite for Van Helden’s version was insatiable: the same week “Professional Widow” hit number 1, an unauthorised version that replaced Amos’s vocal with the refrain from Lisa Stansfield’s “People Hold On” shot to number 4. Although the producers of the bootleg, The Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, had not obtained formal permission from Amos or Van Helden, they were allowed to proceed with a single release, indicating tacit approval.
The remix foreshadowed Amos’s flirtation with electronic music on subsequent albums and endeared her to scores of listeners who had previously been unaware — or dismissive — of her work. It remains one of the best-remembered pieces of dance music of the 1990s.
“Professional Widow” has seldom been reinterpreted since, perhaps due to the spikiness of the original and the iconic stature of the remix. But Amos herself has performed it in different arrangements, including a full-band recreation of the remix, played during her 2007 tour. The few commercially released covers, including a tone-deaf interpretation by hard rockers The Good Year Pimps, have been largely forgotten.
Meanwhile, Boys for Pele has undergone significant critical reassessment. In 2016, an anniversary reissue received wide praise from reviewers, who noted Pele’s cultural significance. Said Vanity Fair: “The album was the perfect storm of raw emotion for the back end of the 90s, when ‘alternative’ really meant something.” Vindication, indeed.
We are keen to hear from our readers. Do you like Tori Amos’s ‘Professional Widow’? What are your memories of the original version — or of the Armand Van Helden remix? Let us know in the comments below.
‘The Life of a Song: The fascinating stories behind 50 of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: Rhino Atlantic, Warner Music TV
Picture credit: Margaret Norton/NBC/NBCU