Cover story: VIPs For a Day: Two fans share their Gold and Platinum ticket experiences. By Renee Roberson Jimmy Ferrin tells us The only thing that was a little odd [about meeting Tori] is the fact that people are five feet away from you while you're talking to her. You're pouring your heart out, sharing very personal stories, and you're put on display in a way - but then you have to think, she does that every time she performs. Reinterpreting the girls: The dolls take Tori classics on tour. By Missy Smith "Taking on five different personae who each bring very different voices to _American Doll Posse_ was a feat in itself. Touring as each member of the posse for each concert was another. But, breathing new life into classic Tori songs (her "girls") as the different Posse personas has taken Tori's artistry to an entirely new level."

Interviews: Joshua Radin & the Summer of Sin: We Were There. By Liz Garlinge Joshua notes, [Tori's] a brilliant performer; it's quite a different set up from my tours - I don't take out four trucks and three buses [when I tour] ...and I don't have a wig person either! Examining the Pink: A Q&A with feminist scholar Patricia Leavy, PhD. By Maureen Paley "[F]or me the overarching message in her music, the one that I want to instill in my daughter and would hope for all young girls, is about identity formation. More specifically, Tori's music urges young women to create integrated senses of self that are internal and thus not at the mercy of external voices."

Feature articles: Dispatches and Polaroids 1998-2008s: Checking in Ten Years On At The Choirgirl Hotel. Part 1. By Alex Ramon [L]ike all of Tori's records, FtCH is an album that yields up its secrets slowly, an album to grow into through repeated listens, and one that should not be reduced by snap judgements or media sound-bites. From the vantage-point of ten years, then, we can perhaps better contextualise the album, and view its lush, dark, sensuous soundscapes less as a radical musical departure for Tori and more as a natural progression, one that emerges organically from her singular history - piano prodigy, rock chick, singer-songwriter poet - as much as from her desire to experiment. Around the World in 44 Years: Tori's Amos and the Impact of Place, Part II. by Elyssa Pachico Tori Amos has always been a shape-shifter. If critics and fans often describe her concerts as emotional journeys, in which Tori runs the gamut of emotions from the raging "Precious Things" to cutesy improvisations about Pink Christmases, it is partly because Tori's own life has been an unpredictable journey of twists and turns. However, when examining her increasingly diverse catalogue of albums, it's clear her journey has been geographic as much as emotional. And All That Could Have Been With Their NINE INCH NAILS by Lauren Razavi Tori and Trent may have parted ways a decade ago, but their latest releases give evidence that they still think along the same lines.

Multimedia: Review: As Heard On...: The music of Hem. by John Higdon [T]his past summer, I took note of a pair of almost dream-like songs emanating from, of all places, the television commercials of an insurance company. The songs spoke of simple things like being there for someone or finding comfort in going home. "I am carrying this scrap of paper/That can crack the darkest sky wide open/Every burden taken from me/Every night my heart unfolding/My home." I soon discovered that these songs were the work of the band I'd dismissed the year before.

PLUS: Ask the Expert by Nadyne Mielke. Tori's piano transcriptions, the source of her name & what it's worth. News by Woj. Where Tori's been, what she's been doing, and where she's going next. Tori Stories: our quarterly comic by Martin Eden. A poem by Terri Ciciless