Do yourself a favor and listen to this track really loud and alone, or at least with some really great headphones. I promise you-you will instantly feel swept away into a whirlwind of metaphorical lyrics and heart-swelling orchestral music, where you feel simply alive and vulnerable.
I feel like this track is the perfect song to end the album and tie Amos’ pro-feminist ideals of women rising back up and learning to be whole again after being faced with such horrible situations in their lives. It’s clear throughout the album that her music is very personal and resonates with aspects of her life, her songs being a sort of therapy that helps her to work through her internal battles.
This song, in particular, integrates a historical story inside her own allegorical one regarding her life. This makes the song that much more complex and full of depth as Amos works brilliantly to weave together with subtle artifacts of history, her own journey through her past. Lines like “There’s something we left on the windowsill/ There’s something we left, yes” and “If you know me so well then tell me which hand I use” give the listeners a lens into the life of the young Grand Duchess and what happened to her so-called “fate”. Amos plays with the speculation of Anastasia escaping her execution in this song, as a means of her being a survivor of such a tragic event in her life.
I think what Tori is trying to do is send a message to her listeners of “we’ll see how brave you really are”, which just so happens to be a repeating line throughout the song. She is trying to tell her audience that you can face life’s changes with determination and the courage to do so, but it can only happen if you come to accept yourself–you cannot change your past but you can choose how you react to it and move forward from it. I think this is such an important message for people, especially women, to learn from listening to this song.
The hammering crescendos of the violins and basses, accompanied with the gentle piano chords and thoughtful lyrics are enough alone to get you hooked on this track! Amos has definitely put her all into not only this song but Under the Pink itself and it shows!
-Genna Dara
Notes on Notes 
I will never forget the first time I heard this the day it came out. It was through headphones just after 2 a.m., listening to my new, all black, portable, Panasonic CD player. After my shift in the recorded sound stacks at the Library of Congress, I’d swung by cab to Tower Records at 21st and Penn. Ave., then a second cab took me to my evening electronic prepress job near Dupont Circle. I walked later to catch the last Metro train leaving Dupont Circle for Wheaton just before midnight, then walked to the garage and drove to my house. The sweeping album Under the Pink came to its dramatic close with a lush orchestra winding down to piano, then the decaying sustain of a model 290 Bösendorfer finally came to a declarative ending with the release of its sustain pedal, and a soft thump.
A German metal band recently released an in interesting cover version. Quite the homage: .
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