On Flying Dutchman

"Yeah, it's not the structure of your typical pop song."

"OK. So who was the person who screamed for Flying Dutchman? OK Well you're going to have to come to Holland cause I can't really sing - I have to sing Flying Dutchman for the Dutch first - That's just like so corny but I have to do that."

“Here. In My Head was written after the album was way out. I would have held it for Under The Pink - I was gonna hold it, because I was writing it just when I started writing Pretty Good Year, and should have done that.”

"This song got me in a lot of trouble. So I only play it in certain places because many arguments happen ? It was bad."

"Do you sometimes just dream and you think your dreams are what you're really living but you're really not? That's like my life all the time. I'm always in this dream and going, 'wow, this is really happening' and it's like, 'no, Tori. It isn't. This is just all in your mind'. And this song came from that place that's like all in my mind. I think I write better when I'm all in my mind so, in a way, it's kinda good that I think I live in my dreams and that it isn't real."

""Mary" was originally on Little Earthquakes. Little Earthquakes got rejected, some of the people might know this, and they wanted me to take all the pianos off and put guitars on, which then pianos weren't something that were getting played a lot on the radio - this was a while ago, 1990 - and I found that Mary became very much about now, when I was in the Detroit Blackouts, very recently. When I wrote the song originally, we were going through environmental changes at the time. Mary being our Earth, Mary being the Magdalene, it is a cross-reference in the Dooey Decimal System: the idea of our Earth being a possession, the idea of "woman" being a possession, the idea of America being a possession to those who pimp her out or your own country, whatever that is. And I really felt like, when I was in the blackout, that not only have things um become clearer to me that we're again at a dangerous cross-roads, of what are we going to leave the next generation."

"Sometimes certain b-sides just wanna come because they love you."

"This is a b-side. This never made it to a record. It was supposed to be on Little Earthquakes, but, of course, I took it off cause I always take the ones I like the best off."

“I've written a song called Sugar about those people you meet that you'll never have a relationship with but if you could have 25 minutes alone with them, you'd have this incredible affair. There's something magical and you want to merge with it in every way possible. That's why I could imagine being a carnivore thousands of years ago; you want to merge with them so intensely you could almost eat them. Say we didn't have bodies and blood and guts but just released these light energies like colours, then we could just merge. That's what making love is really about. Your blue connects with my pale orange; a little bit of fire-engine red with your lime green! That's what they were doing when they ate someone, like their lover or a beaten enemy.”

“I met somebody that was changing my idea of relationships. Like, "Why do you have to be in just one?" And it was tearing me to pieces because I couldn't be in both relationships. And this guy made me a cup of tea and he forgot that I took sugar in it. And it really hurt my feelings because after all I shared with him and "How many cups of tea have I had with this person?" And he forgot that I took sugar in my tea. And that sounds like a little thing to you but it was like, "Well wait a minute, which girl did you think I was that didn't take sugar?" because this wasn't like I've never done this with this person before, had a cup of tea. And the English make tea, so they should know what they're doing, as far as the tea thing. If this would have been the American, we could have let him slide on this, because they don't know what they're doing with tea anyway but he did, and he didn't know, and it made me so mad, and I wrote this song. And I recorded it like, within an hour of when this happened. And that's that song.”

“I was riding on this train to the west country in England, cause I had to make a b-side in about twelve hours. And usually I cheat, right, I have something already written when I’m eating like egg salad or something and I scratch things down on my light bill that I never pay. And it’s always hanging around and I always have some... ya know, a cheat. I didn’t have a cheat this time. So I was like going down to the West Country. And you know, you try to sit on the train and write about stuff. I’d like have little trolls with me and I’d be like writing songs about my little trolls - that ain’t gonna cut it! Ya know! And that's when you get like delusions of serious grandeur. Nobody wants to hear about my fucking trolls! So, anyway, I’m sitting there going, ok that didn’t work. And there was like nobody cute on the train, so I couldn’t like get off! But what's cute to me is like sick to most people, you know. We won’t touch that one. Anyway, I end up at this place, right, this house where we're recording. And nothing’s coming and all of a sudden this little voice pops in my head, right here on my shoulder and Freddie Mercury had just passed the week before. And in his voice he sang this to me. I guess I really should have given him publishing, but it didn’t work.”

“So, I had to get this song together in about two hours. And this boy really pissed me off, because I had a crush on him, right... and he’d been making tea for me for nine months. And so, the whole thing is... he would sit there and ask me... Now if you’re making tea for a girl, right, for nine months, don’t you think, guys. I mean, help me out here. Your noodle, it can hold a lot of information, right? But don’t you think you can remember how many sugars a girl takes in her tea after nine months?”

“Sticks, rocks, food, all sundry items came into the faery donut, including my feet over my head and a little blue girl.”

“The only regret I ever have is that Upside Down wasn’t on Little Earthquakes.”

"It's a b-side time. This one didn't get on the record. It's really funny. I think you'll appreciate this. in my little place that I was living in when I was putting this record together, I made these envelopes like a faerie ring. and um, people would come in and out and they'd get shot if they walked in there. they had to get away from that. because I was deciding. I had 15 songs and only x amount could go on. so they were deciding who wanted to come and who wanted to go somewhere else. this was the hardest one not to get on the record. because um, the reason it didn't was because the very last song was written, Me And A Gun, the very final one to get on. This one just said, "you know, I'll go somewhere else and I'll hangout and I'll come and play whenever you want me to." it's the sweetest vibe, this song. So I play it as much as I can just because um you know, it's one of my favorite people, this song. it's on a few b-sides though the import section."

“In England, every time you release a single you have an opportunity to put down songs you’ve never recorded. In the beginning, it was like, ‘Oh, wow, great.’ Now it’s like I have to do it because I’ve been known for that. If I don’t put on a b-side people write me really nasty letters. Really. My hardcore fans, their favorite stuff is my b-sides. The big faves are Here. In My Head and Upside Down.”