In the run-up to the release of her 18th studio album, In Times of Dragons (2026), Tori Amos has released “Shush”, a sumptuous, six-minute critique of the patriarchy. The new album charts one woman’s escape from her “lizard-demon” husband, cast as an amalgam of Donald Trump, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk.
Tori Amos is known for her earlier work that tackles religion and relationships, but over the last few records, she’s more overtly taking aim at politicians and others in power. On her prior album, 2021’s Ocean to Ocean, she criticized those committing crimes against the environment, and on her album before that, 2017’s Native Invader, she lamented potential Russian influence in the US Government.
“Shush” is more direct, and even quotes a line from one of Peter Thiel’s essays; “he says ‘I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.’”
There’s another mention on Tori Amos’ new track that has got listeners doing a close read of the lyrics. Near the end of the song, she sings: “Can I live through this? / Courtney, thank you.” This can only refer to Courtney Love, whose band, Hole, released their seminal album, Live Through This, in 1994.
This has made fans pause. The strange and strained relationship between Amos and Love was a mainstay myth of 1990s pop culture. Rumours have swirled about a love triangle, but what really went on, and why bring it up now?
Amos was a big fan of Nirvana and recorded a cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the B side of her 1992 EP, Crucify. Today, it’s one of her most popular songs, with 25 million streams on Spotify. In every way, it’s different from the original. Led by her signature piano rather than the guitar, her version is decidedly more stripped-back, allowing the listener to focus on the odd lyrics of the original.
In a 1993 MTV interview, Kurt Cobain called the cover “flattering”, but also goes on to say, “We [referring to himself and Love] used to put it on every morning and have breakfast and dance around. We’d turn it up really loud and do interpretive dancing to it. It’s good breakfast music.”
As tenuous and indirect as it is, this is the first interaction between the two. Although Cobain is complementary, you can’t help but read it as slightly demeaning. Is Amos’ version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” good for interpretive dance and for eating your corn flakes, too? Does that mean the cover is a bit woo-woo and insipid?
Either way, there wouldn’t be any link until a few years later, when, sometime in the mid-1990s, Amos embarks on a relationship with the Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor. On Reddit, you’ll find a lot of speculation about the extent and length of their relationship, and even some thoughts about whether or not they visited the Sharon Tate house, which Reznor rented in the early 1990s.
What we know for certain is that Reznor provided backing vocals on Amos’ 1994 song “Past the Mission”, the third single from her second album Under the Pink. By the time her third album, Boys for Pele, rolled around in 1996, it was evident that whatever relationship they had was long over.
Not only is Reznor not involved with the third album, but Boys for Pele (1996) is an enraged break-up record with several thinly veiled references to Reznor. In “Caught a Lite Sneeze”, the album’s lead single, Amos seethes about making her “own Pretty Hate Machine”, a reference to NIN’s 1989 album, Down In It. When she performs this song on her 1996 tour, she introduces it with an acapella version of NIN’s “Hurt”. Strikingly, another figure that appears throughout Boys for Pele is a woman, a female villain, a widow.
The subject of the album’s fourth track, “Professional Widow”, has long been thought to be about Courtney Love. The song paints an unflattering picture of a conniving woman, asking her lover not to kill himself before they make it big. There are references to heroin too, where the Widow weighs up her options between “brown” or “china white”.
These biting, unsubtle references to Love are filled with palpable rage from Amos’ voice, and come only two years after Cobain’s suicide by gunshot. The song involves Reznor, too. You can imagine Amos writhing on the piano stool, enraged as she sings “starfucker, just like my Daddy”. NIN would go on to release “Starfuckers, Inc.” in 1999, widely thought to be about Love.
In promotional interviews at the time, Amos denied the song was about Love. In one interview, she insists it’s about a Lady Macbeth-type character. This flimsy denial is somehow even more damning, given public sentiment towards Love in the wake of her husband’s suicide. The lyrics across the album left listeners to deduce that Trent Reznor had left Tori Amos for Courtney Love.
What we know is that Love and Reznor were romantically involved for a short period of time. In a 1995 Spin interview, Love throws a now-infamous dig at Reznor, “Don’t call your band Nine Inch Nails when you have a three-inch one.”
There’s the odd subliminal reference to Love in future songs (see “She’s Your Cocaine:, released in 1998), but Amos herself doesn’t really mention this again until a 2003 UK television interview on Liquid News. Her appearance that day coincided with Love’s court appearance in Los Angeles on drug possession charges, which gave hosts Paddy O’Connell and Claudia Winkleman a way in.
When asked about “Professional Widow”, Amos cheekily insists that it’s only “allegedly” written about Love. She goes on to say, “I think that when you’re part of a peer group, you learn things about each other and there’s a way that you treat people. And sometimes if you treat people in a certain way, sometimes years later it comes around and bites you.”
From Amos, who is usually soft-spoken in interviews, this is a cutting indictment of Love at one of her lowest moments. As the panel rakes Love over the coals, the segment offers an interesting insight into media culture in the early 2000s, where women were vilified in ways we had hoped were no longer tolerated. “Shush”, of course, says otherwise. At the time, Love was one of the greatest victims of this misogyny, especially after Cobain’s death, and as Spin magazine observed in 1998, she was the “most hated woman in rock”.
However, during the #MeToo movement and the subsequent downfall of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, a 2005 red-carpet clip of Love resurfaced and went viral. When asked if she has any advice for a young woman moving to Hollywood, she says: “I’ll get libeled if I say it… If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party at the Four Seasons, don’t go.”
She was lauded for speaking truth to power and showed many how easily Love’s voice has been dismissed over the years. With Love’s character, though, it’s sometimes hard to know what’s real. In an incendiary Instagram rant in 2021, Love slammed former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl over Nirvana’s royalties and went on to accuse Reznor of “systemic abuse of kids”. The post was soon deleted, and Love issued an apology.
Tori Amos, who is open about being a survivor of sexual violence, has had her own close encounter with abusive men in power. In 2024, Tortoise Media exposed disturbing allegations about her close friend and collaborator, Neil Gaiman, detailing sexual assault and misconduct. In a Guardian interview, Amos expresses her shock at the allegations, calling it all “heartbreaking grief”.
“Shush” is a song about being silenced and unheard. After thanking Courtney Love, Tori Amos goes on to sing “He calls me his Cassandra, because he won’t believe my prophecies”. Love’s own advice on Weinstein was perhaps not prophetic, but it was certainly prescient. The Cassandra reference, the ancient myth of a woman not being believed, echoes the nature of the victimhood of sexual violence survivors, especially those victimised by powerful men.
In light of culture’s new approach to women like Love, it seems Amos has also reevaluated her. In response to an Instagram comment letting her know about the song, Love wrote, “It’s a great song. Made me blush.” Maybe the truth of what happened between them will never be revealed. More importantly, perhaps, after all these years, Tori Amos and Courtney Love have gained a new understanding of one another.