"God," Tori Amos (1994)

The slick groove of a desperate heretic

Peak: #1 on the alternative rock chart
Streams: 3.1 million

In her long and intoxicating career, Tori Amos has written some of the most inscrutable lyrics this side of Lewis Carroll. I still don't know what a damn cornflake girl is, and I’ve been singing the hell out of that song for almost 30 years.

But part of Tori’s allure — and yes, I call her “Tori,” despite never having spoken to her in my life — is that every now and then, she emerges from her mystical fog with a line so perfectly, poignantly clear that it might as well be carved on a statue. “I’ve shaved every place where you’ve been, boy.” “So you can make me cum, that doesn’t make you Jesus.” “She’s convinced she can hold back a glacier, but she couldn’t keep baby alive.”

And my personal favorite: “I think there are pieces of me you’ve never seen. Maybe she’s just pieces of me you’ve never seen.” (Emphasis mine. Spiritual resonance as I rewrote the lyrics to be about various boys in my high school, also mine.)

“God,” the first single from Tori’s second major-label album Under the Pink, has one of her greatest epigrams: “God, sometimes You just don’t come through. Do You need a woman to look after You?”