Album · Tori Amos
Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos
Little Earthquakes is an album by Tori Amos, released in 1991. 4 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 110 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “Silent All These Years”, on 52 lists with a best position of #10.
Little Earthquakes is the debut solo album from Tori Amos, the singer-songwriter and pianist, and it very nearly came out as a different record. Atlantic turned down her first version, so Amos went back in with her then-boyfriend Eric Rosse and built a second one. The producer credits spread across Amos, Rosse, Davitt Sigerson and Ian Stanley, but the piano and that voice are at the center of everything.
This is chamber music with the doors kicked in: songs that start in a whisper and end in a torrent, confessional and raw, with the keys doing the work a whole guitar band would do anywhere else. "Silent All These Years", "China", "Winter" and "Crucify" were the singles, and "Leather" is a spiky little keeper in its own right.
Critics and listeners took to it right away, and it has only climbed in stature since: Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums put it at number 73, and Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums list has it at 233.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from Little Earthquakes on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Silent All These Years | 52 | #10 | – | 1992–2025 | |
| 2 | Crucify | 37 | #34 | – | 1992–2026 | |
| 3 | Winter | 17 | #490 | – | 1999–2023 | |
| 4 | Leather | 4 | #1878 | – | 2007–2010 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.