Tori Amos just released her 18th studio album, In Times of Dragons, a dark, allegorical work that stands as her most politically charged record to date. At its center is a character called the Lizard Demon, an amalgamation of powerful, predatory men. Amos is evasive about the specifics: “I’m not saying that’s in Washington, D.C. We’re not mentioning names,” she says when we ask. Instead, she constructs a narrative in which her protagonist is trapped in a life of luxury, married to this mysterious bad guy, before ultimately escaping.
Though Amos typically writes on her own, In Times of Dragons marks a rare shift: The album includes contributions from her 25-year-old daughter, Natasha “Tash” Hawley, who will graduate from law school this year. The collaboration emerged almost by accident. After she’d mapped out the album’s narrative, Amos found herself stuck on the music. The breakthrough came when Tash resurfaced months-old recordings of the two casually improvising at the piano. It’s just one way that this album stands out in a career full of surprising choices.
Rolling Stone caught up with Amos ahead of her European tour to talk about the new album’s urgency, her life lessons in the music industry, why she skipped Lilith Fair in the Nineties, and the creative path that has defined her career from early rejection to reinvention and beyond.
Your daughter has three co-writing credits on this album, which is rare for you. How did that happen?
I was struggling with this record, and I told her and she said, “Mom, six months ago, we were hanging out and I recorded us just jamming at the piano in Florida.” And I said, in my menopausal mind, “We were jamming?” And she sent me “Strawberry Moon” and “Stronger Together.” That gave me the launch.
You’ve made political albums before, but this one feels so much more raw and urgent. What made it different from your other political albums?
Come on, nobody really needed me in the Obama years. [On this album,] the Lizard Demon [character] is based on real people. It’s an amalgamation of men. We’re not mentioning names. So now we’re walking down the fork in the road that goes way back. What if I would’ve chosen a different man in my life? I had to allow myself to make that choice to write this record because this had to be a narrative. If you’re going to document our times, the only way is through allegory, I think, to allow other people in so they can join the story.
How did you find your voice as a singer at the start of your career?
It took me a while. I imitated everybody. I’ve been called a third-rate Pat Benatar. I played piano bars, so I did the covers. That was my big teaching. You listen to other singers, Stevie Nicks, the whole gamut, and you’d find the ones you can do. I’d stand in front of the mirror and try to do “Magic Man.” So you try and emulate these women and find your voice vocally.
What advice would you give to your younger self when you first released your debut, Little Earthquakes?
Don’t piss off the suits. Open champagne instead of thinking you can piss on their desk. Just open the champagne and drink it and tell them how great they are, instead of telling them the truth. That would’ve served me so well.
What do you wish someone had told you about performing live?
Study Prince. Study Robert Plant. Study Jim Morrison. The muses told me that, and I did. So I got that right. I studied them. I watched them plug into a voltage. If you go out there as yourself, that’s where you get it all wrong. You need to leave yourself in the fucking dressing room. Be a channel. Let the muses and the songs come through you. The thing about performing is it is not about you. If you get that, you get it right. Ego at the door. You must serve. You surrender. The piano must play you.
When did your muses start appearing?
When I was really young, but then I lost sight of them when I started chasing to make it in the music industry. After seven and a half years of being rejected and me going, “I can’t do this piano-bar thing for too much longer …” Luckily, the piano found its way back to me, but it was that crash and burn before I made Little Earthquakes [in 1992]. I’m so grateful for that because in the dark times during Boys for Pele [in 1996] — that was such a controversial record, it was such a tough time. If I hadn’t had that experience in 1988 where [my early band] Y Kant Tori Read went scorched-earth, I wouldn’t have been able to withstand the heat in 1996. Because of that, I made a commitment to stay true to the muses.
You never performed at Lilith Fair. In your 1998 Rolling Stone cover story, you said, “This isn’t just about eating some chicken and hearing your favorite female singers. You walk into my show, you walk into my world. It’s a film every night. I can’t impose that on Lilith and vice versa.” What are your feelings looking back?
I’d send that to Sarah [McLachlan] — she’d find it funny. She’d laugh her ass off. She’s got a good sense of humor. [Lilith] was a great business model. She did a great thing. I’ll be honest with you, I’ve got to give it up to her. She asked me to headline. I have a lot of respect for Sarah. At the time, I was trying to find my sovereignty. Being a part of a festival like that didn’t feel like my path to find it.
What is your favorite city in the world?
London. Hands down. I first came to London in 1991. I didn’t know anybody. So I would go to the Tower of London with my sandwich and talk to the dead queens. I would imagine Anne Boleyn coming through Traitors’ Gate. I would sit there on a bench and wait for her to come. And she came every time. And she and I would have these conversations. They were usually very mundane.
What did you guys talk about?
She would say things to me like, “Tori, don’t try too hard to make friends. Keep coming back to Traitors’ Gate. I come every day. So you can come talk to me. Just take a step back, and don’t be too eager, and you’ll be fine.”
Courtesy of Jennifer Precious Finch’s archive 
Josh Martin for Rolling Stone
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny in a split image
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny Dealt With Trump Quietly. It’s a Smart Move
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny are both major superstars — and they’ve shared some parallels in their careers and discographies for several years. Now, they’re even using the same playbook to deal with taunts and baiting from Donald Trump and the White House’s social media teams.
Since Trump took office during his second term, he and his administration have been using social media as part of their communication strategy. The propaganda-like, rage-bait-style clips often lean into internet culture and use popular music to make light of Trump’s most egregious actions, like his immigration policy and war-hungry foreign policy.
Olivia Rodrigo, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, and Noah Kahan are just some of the artists who have had their music used in these videos without their permission — and vehemently spoken out against these actions and against the president. In the past couple of weeks, the Trump administration seems to have wanted to provoke a response from two of the world’s biggest superstars: Bad Bunny and Swift.
On July 30, the official White House TikTok used “La Mudanza” for a particularly tone-deaf video about immigration that celebrated the number of deportations under Trump. A week later, a video with text that said, “mood because it’s August and Donald Trump is your president” set to Swift’s “August” was uploaded by Team Trump, the president’s official campaign account. The caption was an overt provocation: “I’m sure Taylor Swift is going to be super excited we used her song,” it read. Days later, another clip from the same account featured an edited version of Swift’s Red album cover with text that said, “Did you know that Taylor Swift wrote a whole album about the color of the Republican Party?”
Neither musician has released a public statement denouncing the use of their music in Trump’s videos. Instead, two of the world’s biggest superstars quietly removed their songs from videos posted by official accounts linked to the Trump administration. (It’s unclear if there is a TikTok feature that allows selective sound muting on videos or if the respective teams reached out to the social media accounts directly.) The tracks are still available for other TikTok accounts to use in their videos, making their silence a pointed — and smart — approach. Both Bad Bunny and Swift seem to recognize the president and his administration’s tactics for what they are: antagonizing moves that keep the Trump conversation centered on his social media presence, rather than his actual policies and the harm they commit. Why would they add their star power to the conversation and stoke the flames when that’s exactly what the White House appears to want?
Some people argue that celebrities should wield their platform to denounce Trump at any chance if they are truly not politically aligned with his MAGA politics. But because they hold so much influence, these superstars need to be strategic about how they use it.
Benito, in particular, has been incredibly outspoken about his politics. He stood on two of the world’s biggest stages and used them to voice pro-immigration messages, denounce Trump’s policies, and highlight Puerto Rico as it struggles with the effects of U.S. imperialism. “Before I say, ‘Thank God,’ I’m going to say, ‘ICE out,’” the Puerto Rican superstar said at the 2026 Grammys. “We’re not savage. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans.” Last summer, Bad Bunny’s music video for “Nuevayol” used a voice that sounds a lot like the president’s to deliver a pro-immigrant message. “I made a mistake. I want to apologize to the immigrants in America. I mean the United States. I know America is the whole continent,” the voice bellows out of a Seventies radio toward the end of the video. “I want to say that this country is nothing without the immigrants.”
Fans were convinced that Benito would speak out against the official White House TikTok account when it used one of his most political songs. But commenting on the video would only blow up the discussion for a wider audience. When Rodrigo, Perry, Grande, and Kahan made public comments, spokespeople for the White House used the opportunity to spread hateful rhetoric. “We’ll say this one last time: what’s actually barbaric, inhumane, and heinous are the criminal illegal aliens who have injured and murdered innocent American citizens,” Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Rolling Stone after Grande spoke out. It’s the antithesis of what Benito said during his Grammys speech this year: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
Swift, on the other hand, has dealt with Trump and the right-wing’s instigations for years, each one crazier than the last. The TikTok videos from the last week aren’t even the first time that the administration has used the singer’s music for social media videos. Last fall, both the official White House TikTok account and Team Trump used songs from Swift’s then-newly released The Life of a Showgirl in separate videos. One plucked the lyrics “pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes” from “The Fate of Ophelia” to celebrate Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and the first and second ladies. The others boasted about Trump by using “Father Figure” and honored Melania Trump’s Patriot of the Year award with “Opalite.” As of Aug. 10, the audio is not available under all of these specific videos.
The pop superstar has not spoken publicly about these instances. But she has made her disdain for Trump clear. Over the years, Swift has criticized Trump’s autocratic leadership. On X, she wrote “we will vote you out” and endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 and 2024 elections, respectively. In 2019, Swift told Rolling Stone, “There’s literally nothing worse than white supremacy. It’s repulsive. There should be no place for it.”
Even though she’s shared her liberal viewpoints on issues like abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and racial inequality, Swift has still faced ridiculous claims of being MAGA-aligned and folding in right-wing dog whistles to her music — and that’s without ever naming Trump. If Swift were to make a statement about her music being used by the Trump administration, the attention-seeking president would absolutely revel in it. Getting Swift and Bad Bunny to weigh in is exactly the type of headline grabber he would love to draw attention from his remarkably unpopular presidency.