A remix single with a few surprises up its sleeve.

"Jackie's Strength," a beautiful track off Amos's fourth solo album "from the choirgirl hotel," saw two commercial single releases. This is the second release that consists of remixes only. All four remixes of the title track would fit quite nicely onto any dance floor. However, the mixes of "Father Lucifer," from Amos's third solo album "Boys for Pele," are a different story. They are quite unique and very effective mixes that you can't always dance to. The instrumental version just might take your breath away.

Tori's best dance floor adaptation

Tori Amos is one of those few artists that still puts out a lot of singles to please collectors and long time fans. But by far and large she is a full-length album/CD artists and you really need to buy those to get an appreciation of her unique style.

That being said, I think "Jackie's Strength" is one of her best single releases. The song is one of Tori's most beautiful -> a breathtaking and thoughtful ballad. Her fans have many different views on the song's meaning: my feeling is that she wrote it about Jackie Kennedy.

Unlike most of Tori's releases, "Jackie's Strength" was remixed and promoted to dance clubs, and reached #1 on the Billboard Dance/Club Chart in the spring of 1999. The Wedding Cake Club Mix is the definitive mix here and made this into kind of a dance floor smash. The mix gives "Jackie" an unmistakable groove but maintains its beauty and its serious and contemplative tone.

Most of Tori's biggest fans and purists are against having her songs remixed. But I think we can make an exception here. Only a tiny handful of Tori tracks have been remixed for dance clubs, namely "Professional Widow", "In The Springtime Of His Voodoo", and "Don't Make Me Come To Vegas. Over all these tracks "Jackie's Strength" stands out as the Tori's best dance floor adaptation to date.

What where they thinking.....

Don't get the idea that I'm one of those people who hates all Tori remixes. I'm not. I actually enjoy quite a few of them, but most of these are absolutely horrible. The "Wedding Cake Edit" is pretty good and "Father Lucifer:Sylkscreen Remix" is quite enjoyable. The Wedding Cake Club Mix" is not very enjoyable and no matter how hard I try I can't get into "One Rascal Dub #1 .The "Father Lucifer" instrumental things sounds like a hip hop remix and well, I suppose it isn't horrible in comparison, but really now people, hip hop? The next is an appropriately titled "Meltdown Mix" because it sounds like one. It is very repetitive which wouldn't be as annoying if it wasn't so blasted lengthy(8:22) which I would be perfectly able to handle if it wasn't such utter dren. Again we visit "Rascal Dub" mixes with number two of the set. It sounds exactly like the preceding track unfortunately, repertitive and labourious. ANd what can say about the "Bonus Beats" besides BLAH!
Buy it if you are a Tori fan, if not pass it up.