Not my favorite, but definatey a 90s singer:

Sinead O'Connor

Absolutely Alanis. 

"Jagged" is one of two albums on which I have never fast forwarded through any song.  Juliana's "Become What You Are" is the other one.  In my opinion neither Juli nor Alanis ever did anything again that matched those 2 albums.  Alanis takes the top spot for me because she hit the mainstream and influenced the world.

As for Tori, I loved "Little Earthquakes."  When that first came out, she performed at a club in my hometown, with only a piano, and to this day I have never seen such passion in a live show of any kind.  But "Boys For Pele" I just didn't "get."  So I got disinterested in her.

Sarah McLachlan's good, but repetitive.  I love Enya, but I put her music in a different category than "singer/songwriter."

Absolutely Alanis. 

"Jagged" is one of two albums on which I have never fast forwarded through any song.  Juliana's "Become What You Are" is the other one.  In my opinion neither Juli nor Alanis ever did anything again that matched those 2 albums.  Alanis takes the top spot for me because she hit the mainstream and influenced the world.

As for Tori, I loved "Little Earthquakes."  When that first came out, she performed at a club in my hometown, with only a piano, and to this day I have never seen such passion in a live show of any kind.  But "Boys For Pele" I just didn't "get."  So I got disinterested in her.

Sarah McLachlan's good, but repetitive.  I love Enya, but I put her music in a different category than "singer/songwriter."



Ironically (no pun intended), Alanis was a teen pop singer but got well recieved as an adult artist.

So, why can't a certain former "Electric Youth" (the artist, not me) fet recogintion since her music is great and has a beautiful voice?

In terms of musical experimentation, those three rock...I think Kate Bush was really the kernel leading to Bjork and Tori in alot of ways, though I think Tori was the most varied and immediately emotional. Bjork and even Kate Bush have this air of distance to them...Tori combines singer-songwriter music and its immediacy and personal relevance with a "prog" sense of intimidating grandeur.



I agree that both Tori Amos and Björk are reminiscent of Kate Bush, albeit in different ways. I think Björk is probably closer to Kate in spirit; both of these women are unabashedly imaginative and unafraid to be whimsical. I would never let the whole child-like sense-of-wonder thing fool me into thinking they're not fiercely independent artists. Tori, on the other hand, is probably closer to Kate in sound, but I sometimes think Kate's influence on Tori's music gets exaggerated in the press to the point where other obvious influences (like Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro) don't even get mentioned. There are also many substantial differences between the two of them; you mention, for example, that there is a certain "distance" with Kate's music as opposed to the emotional immediacy of Tori's. I mostly agree with this assessment, although I consider it neither a good nor bad thing for Kate or Tori; it just depends on what sort of style you prefer to listen to. I think the "distance" you to allude to exists because Kate sometimes takes a very conceptual, almost cerebral approach to her songwriting; a perfect example is "Watching You Without Me," where she uses deliberately hushed vocals, backwards vocals, ghostly "woooo" sounds, an SOS signal, and rapidly chopped-up pleas for help to express silence and difficulties in communication. There's also a vaguely Oriental sound to it that adds to the overall effect. I don't think Tori would be likely to take that kind of approach. Tori's music is part of the stripped-down, confessional singer-songwriter tradition of Joni Mitchell; thus, her approach to the same theme is a direct, emotional, and pure song like "Silent All These Years" (at least, when she's at her best...). I consider both songs to be beautiful in their own way.

I actually find Kate the most varied. The transformations -- vocally, lyrically, production-wise, etc. -- from The Kick Inside to The Dreaming are drastic. Hounds of Love also sounds almost nothing like The Dreaming. You can certainly still see how one album might logically lead to the next, but the jumps are nonetheless impressive (with the exception of Lionheart's closeness in sound to The Kick Inside, of course). Since Hounds of Love, I think she's arguably been less daring and innovative overall, but that doesn't mean the work she's done since then isn't good; her own reputation as an innovator, after all, is pretty difficult to live up to. The differences between albums post-HOL are significant but less drastic, perhaps closer to how most artists evolve with each album. It's probably because she's older, and more interested in refining her sound than in wild sonic experimentation these days. Still, I'd never put it past her to surprise me, and I personally find Aerial a stranger and more arcane album than The Sensual World or The Red Shoes.

Anyway, sorry for the length of this post and for turning your thread on '90s singer/songwriters into a meditation on Kate Bush, a primarily '80s singer/songwriter whom I obviously adore. Once I get rambling..... I'm tellin' ya. ;)

One queer thing (I'm not alluding to anywhere here, and that was not meant to be a pun) about female singer-songwriters in the 90s is it's association with a certain kind of sexuality. I don't need to mention any names (think of the main ones). Why do you think that is?