As it nears its 20th anniversary, the classic album has been shortlisted for inclusion in the 33 1/3 books series. Will it finally get the recognition it so deserves?

The shortlist for the latest subjects in the 33 1/3 series of books about classic albums was released last month. Among the would-be titles in the music book series are three submissions for Tori Amos’s 1996 album Boys for Pele, which turns 20 next year.

Boys for Pele was the first Amos album I owned, a gift from my Toriphile girlfriend who has succeeded, over the decade we have spent together, in turning me into a true believer – an unexpected and profound conversion.

For a long time, I loathed Amos’s music. I recoiled at her high-femme wailings and those strange Bosendorfer tempests. I knew Cornflake Girl and Armand van Helden’s remix of Professional Widow, her sole No 1. But beyond those songs, I had very little context for Amos, just a vague second-hand impression of her as a still-touring 90s curio; a super-straight manic pixie dream girl, all ginger tresses and airhead lyrics.

Tori Amos: 'I’m too raw for straight men. They are tortured by my shows' Read more

The truth was a revelation: Amos was an unrepentant weirdo, but no kooky space cadet. She was the daughter of a southern Methodist minister, a child prodigy of Native American descent who’d rejected the conservative dogma of the Bible and the classical music scene alike, abandoning church concerts to tour dive bars and gay haunts. Here was a virtuoso pianist who loved Zeppelin and psychedelics, a gal who hung out with Hell’s Angels long before Lana Del Rey straddled the back of a Harley. She turned Slayer’s Reign in Blood into a period anthem, is rumoured to have inspired Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral, duetted with Tool’s Maynard James Keenan and outdid history’s entire pantheon of church-baiting rock gods in one, sublime stroke with the standout from 1994’s Under the Pink, Icicle.

Long before #endmen became a social media trend, Amos was doing misandrists proud. While Alanis Morrisette and Liz Phair were trying to hitch a ride out of Guyville, Amos was razing the patriarchy to the ground, serving up vampiric ex-boyfriends to Pele, the Hawaiian fire goddess rumoured to enjoy man flesh: “I wanted to sacrifice all these guys to the volcano goddess and roast them like marshmallows,” she explained. In the album’s front-porch art, Amos invoked the eerie, biblical magic of the muddy rural South, cradling a shotgun and suckling a piglet. This was no manic pixie dream girl.

In the meantime, my girlfriend persisted: she compiled mixtapes, dragged me to gigs, regaled me with trivia. And still, I found myself palpably annoyed by Amos’s music, unable to bear more than two songs in a row before exercising a stereo veto. When I finally got round to playing Boys for Pele, alone in my bedroom, I skipped the opening song, frustrated at its silent 15-second intro, only to be blown away by the dark, harpsichord waltz of track two, Blood Roses. In an instant, I understood why I’d spy a goth contingent at every Amos show. Amos can do soda-sweet white magic, but there’s bitter salt here too, carnographic songs humid with vampires, devils and blood-lettings.

Gradually, over the years, something shifted. I realised the shudder I felt when Amos’s music filled my head wasn’t dislike, but rather an intense refusal – her songs felt potent, dangerous, alive; they spoke to a part of myself I didn’t recognise and couldn’t acknowledge (funny then, to discover years on, that Amos has described Boys for Pele as a journey towards owning “pieces of myself I had never claimed”).

I wanted to understand the pull she had on me, so I pored over her lyrics, using the words to decipher and navigate the “girls” (Amos perceives her songs as independent, living things, with wants and desires and fancies of their own, things to be coaxed into appearing). What I found were taboo-smashing gospels, potent with passion, trauma, pleasure, destruction and female power manifested in a thousand different ways. The music I’d dismissed as too weird, too feminine, too heteronormative was, in fact, deeply queer, rich with life and sound and mythology, and when I surrendered to it, it slayed me.

I still don’t fully understand why her live shows bring me to tears, or how her music – which has only positive associations for me – can provoke such a profound, almost violent emotional response in me, something beyond catharsis. It’s not all about the sobfests, though. Her diverse, sizeable and still-in-progress discography – which I’m happily excavating – includes easier, warmer, less arcane numbers, such as my current favourites Crazy, Tear in Your Hand (the song that led to her friendship with Neil Gaiman) and this sweet, delicate rendition of Bruce Springteen’s I’m on Fire. But it all started with the dark, wounded magic of Boys for Pele.

Amos’s fans are the most dedicated I know, in part because she has been overlooked, misunderstood and misrepresented all too often by the music press (particularly in America). This, despite a legacy flowering in the likes of Taylor Swift. I hope 33 1/3 helps to reverse this. A more honest, informed and nuanced re-appraisal of Amos’ subversive art is well overdue.