Before “Flicker” was a song, it was a daydream. And ten years later, it’s time to tell the whole story.

On this episode, Anatomy of a Track returns with a very special chapter: the extraordinary origin story of Tori Amos’ “Flicker,” her original song for the Netflix documentary Audrie & Daisy.

We launched this series earlier this year with a deep dive into Tori’s brilliant In Times of Dragons closer, “23 Peaks,” alongside her longtime musical right-hand man, John Philip Shenale.

This time, we’ve got another slightly less brilliant bald man who collaborated with Tori on a different—but no less epic—scale. OUR OWN MATT MAZUR. 👨🏻‍🦲 That’s right, the call is coming from inside the house. ☎️

TL;DR: Matt was the executive steering Audrie & Daisy at Netflix—and the guy who dreamed up the idea of bringing Tori Amos aboard to create an original song, pitched it, and actually made it happen.

From Los Angeles to the Cornish coast of England and back, Matt takes us on the ride of his life: a die hard Tori fan suddenly working shoulder to shoulder with one of his greatest creative inspirations, navigating enormous stakes, the evolution of an extraordinary song, and an impossibly ambitious awards campaign.

For the song’s tenth anniversary, he’s sharing the most complete account yet of how “Flicker” came to be, including new stories, behind-the-scenes revelations, and the extraordinary intersection of fandom, friendship, art, and activism. A literal daydream turned awards contender to be reckoned with—brought to life through passion, persistence, shared values… and a whole lot of Netflix money, HONEY.

But at the heart of it all is a song, a film, and two young women whose stories deserve to be remembered.

This episode is lovingly dedicated to Audrie Pott and Daisy Coleman. ❤️

Join Matt, Joey, and Kristen as we shed a little light on “Flicker.”

FURTHER READING, WATCHING & LISTENING

VICE: Joe Vallese interviews Tori Amos and the directors of Audrie & Daisy
https://www.vice.com/en/article/audrie-and-daisy-netflix-documentary-social-media-sexual-assault/

Los Angeles Times: Tori’s first-person essay on sexual violence and writing “Flicker”
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-ca-st-tori-amos-sexual-violence-20160918-snap-story.html

Netflix: “Flicker” featurette with Tori Amos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UI23cmWRpA

MTV News: Tori discusses Audrie & Daisy with Meredith Graves
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPeT2P10Cs8

Front Row Features: Tori Amos Lends Voice on Netflix Doc Audrie & Daisy
https://frontrowfeatures.com/news-dvd-film-music-online-streaming/tori-amos-lends-voice-netflix-doc-audrie-daisy-17358.html

Billboard’s Soul Sisters: Tori Amos interview
https://shows.acast.com/soulsisters/episodes/toriamos

Awards Daily: Tori talks “Flicker,” cyberbullying and teenage sexual abuse
https://www.awardsdaily.com/2016/10/03/best-original-song-interview-tori-amos-talks-about-flicker-americas-endemic-cyber-bullying-and-teenage-sexual-abuse/

Billboard: Tori on “Flicker” and the 20th anniversary of Boys for Pele
https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/tori-amos-flicker-netflix-audrie-daisy-interview-7534135/

The Hollywood Reporter: Full Oscar Songwriters Roundtable with Tori, Sting, Alicia Keys, John Legend, Pharrell Williams and Justin Timberlake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXfbTkBpWRQ

The Hollywood Reporter: Tori on “Flicker” and reconnecting with her muses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovWlWM5w2ug

Sting.com: Hollywood Reporter Songwriter Roundtable transcript
https://sting.com/blogs/news/hollywood-reporter-songwriter-roundtable

Talkhouse: Tori Amos in conversation with Shirley Manson
https://talkhouse.com/tori-amos-talks-shirley-manson-garbage-talkhouse-music-podcast

Deadline: Tori on “Flicker,” sexual assault and social media
https://deadline.com/2016/11/tori-amos-audrie-and-daisy-netflix-flicker-awards-interview-1201847384/

IndieWire: Tori Amos and “Flicker”—How to Hunt Down an Oscar Song
https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/tori-amos-flicker-oscar-best-song-audrie-and-daisy-sexual-assault-1201763180/

Los Angeles Times: Tori on the Valkyries and Mad Max’s Furiosa as inspirations for “Flicker”
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-en-mn-tori-amos-20161018-snap-story.html

KPCC’s The Frame: Tori on music’s ability to provide comfort during troubled times
https://laist.com/shows/the-frame/tori-amos-musical-artists-can

When we first heard that Tori was bringing three new background vocalists onto this tour, we had absolutely no idea what that was going to sound like.

And then we heard them and it was like:
OH DUH. OF COURSE.

Liv, Deni, and tonight’s very special guest Hadley Kennary became such a distinct part of these shows that by the end of the tour, it was impossible to think about the arrangements without hearing their voices in them.

Three powerhouse singers, each coming from their own musical lives, stepping into a songbook with thirty years of history behind it—and figuring out how to make something that felt completely at home without simply reproducing what had come before.

And somehow, they did exactly that.

Hadley in particular brings a beautiful kind of musical curiosity to these arrangements that we found completely captivating. Her voice has a honeyed combination of warmth, power, and character, and you can hear her making choices—responding to the music, pushing it somewhere new, finding colors we hadn’t heard there before.

She didn’t just become part of the sound of this tour.

She helped originate it.

So today, we FINALLY get to talk to Hadley about what was happening inside those songs, what it meant to step into Tori’s extraordinary catalogue, and how three individual voices found their way toward something entirely their own.

As Tori says, Hadley is “Never last”, but she IS the grand finale of our mini series featuring the Angel Witches… ✨

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

If you have been finding yourself wondering, “Where’re those angels when you need them?” you’re in the right place.

We are not only Introverted but Willing to Discuss Tori Amos, but also beyond overjoyed to continue our deep dive into the world of our beloved Angel Witches—the powerhouse harmonic trio who made history as the first vocalists ever to join Tori Amos on tour—with the one and only Liv Gibson.

If you made it to a show on the In Times of Dragons tour—or followed along through the glorious wealth of YouTube recordings we were utterly spoiled by—you probably noticed pretty quickly that Tori’s stage aesthetic and sound had changed. And we mean sound in every possible sense: the acoustics, the arrangements, and even our understanding of “the Tori Amos sound.”

Liv, alongside her fellow coven-mates Deni and Hadley, helped create this fresh, unprecedented experience, realizing layers of Tori’s music that had rarely, if ever, been heard live before—and bringing to life characters from nearly twenty albums of Tori’s original material.

Naturally, a fairly forensic investigation into the Angel Witches’ own music ensued. Liv’s is particularly fascinating: soulful, playful, sensual, funny, surprising, and deeply her own.

On this episode, we’re joined by Liv to talk about the music she makes when she’s not busy being an Angel Witch—and to explore what is uniquely, marvelously Liv Gibson.

Buckle up and set the sat nav to hell, because today we have the tremendous pleasure of diving deep with Deni Hlavinka one-third of the trio that became one of the defining sounds of Tori Amos’s In Times of Dragons tour: the Angel Witches.

One of the things we all loved most about this tour was getting to watch the Angels find their place in the show in real time. Admittedly, none of us really knew what this new vocal configuration was going to be like - or what it might become. But little by little, their voices started weaving themselves into the fabric of the songs-adding new textures, new tension, new beauty - until by the end of the tour it was hard to imagine this chapter of Tori’s live show without them. And that’s why, of course, we’ve collectively been so curious about the women behind those voices.

Deni studied professional music at Berklee College of Music, where she was taught and mentored by Grammy-winning artist Paula Cole. While she was there, she met guitarist Chris West, and the two went on to form The Western Den, a project built around lush arrangements, intricate harmonies, and the kind of close attention to sound that still runs through Deni’s soundscapes. Oh and she liked Chris enough to make him her husband.

Deni now makes music under the name Fire Swimmer, her electronic-pop solo project. It takes much of what she does so beautifully — layered vocals, emotional intimacy, atmosphere — and pushes them into a darker, more synth-driven world. And after spending months hearing her voice become part of Tori’s songs, it’s especially fascinating, and deeply rewarding, to hear what transpires when Deni gets to build a musical world entirely of her own.

So today, we’re talking about how she found her way onto the stage with Tori, what it’s like to step inside songs that people have loved and lived with for decades, how the Angel Witches learned to sing together as a unit, and what life looks like behind the scenes when you’re taking a show like this around the world.

We went looking for dragons.

We found them. We followed them. We argued about them. And now we’re finally ready to talk about what the hell just happened.

On this episode of Introverted But Willing to Discuss Tori Amos, we’re wrapping up the In Times of Dragons tour– talking about the songs, the setlists, the surprises, the transcendent moments, and the occasional decision that left us with… some thoughts.

What made this tour so remarkable was Tori’s refusal to simply revisit the past. She reimagined it.

Night after night, songs we’ve lived with for years were given new shapes, new textures, and entirely new emotional dimensions. Familiar became unfamiliar. Songs we thought we knew inside and out suddenly had somewhere else to go.

And a huge part of that transformation came from Liv Gibson, Deni Hlavinka, and Hadley Kennary. These three extraordinary voices brought new color and dimension to the songbook.

The Angel Witches didn’t simply add harmonies. They became part of the architecture of these performances, making songs we’ve known for decades feel newer and more vivid than we ever imagined.

They became an intrinsic part of this chapter of the Tori Amos songbook and now, inevitably, part of the mythology. And then there was everything happening beyond the stage. Because the other great gift of a Tori tour is the people.

The Tori community showed up in force. Strangers became seat mates, seat mates became friends, online friendships became real-life reunions. Many of these relationships go back over 30 years. We shared meals, rides, theories, memories, hugs, and, frankly, an unreasonable number of wildly divergent opinions.

That human connection is part of what makes this music matter. And it made these shows better.

So now we’re taking one last look at In Times of Dragons: the reinvention, the revelations, the voices that helped reshape the songs, and the people who made the experience bigger than any one night in any one theater.

The tour is over. But if there’s one thing Tori has taught us, it’s that a song is never finished just because we think we know it.

Apparently, neither are we.

Shush serpent tongue 🐍 at 8:15-8:25: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7JrEfDuMBM&t=788s

On this episode we are leaping headfirst into Pandora's Aquarium and having it out over the absolute embarrassment of riches that are Tori's opening and closing album tracks, which are routinely considered some of the strongest and most significant work on their respective records.

Tori, when asked about sequencing albums in a 2012 interview with The Quietus:

"I'm always looking at things as albums, not as something that people pull a track off of. I'm looking at the complete work. The fluidity of moving from one to the other—I've always thought that was really essential. Being able to sit there and put the album on and have an experience." (2012)

Every Tori album begins with a promise. Sometimes an invitation. Sometimes a warning. Sometimes a slap across the face. And by the time the record ends, she's left us either inspired, devastated, enlightened, beguiled, catatonic... or perhaps all of the above.

Tonight we're putting those bookends to the test.

Now that In Times of Dragons has given us opening and closing songs I think we're pretty comfortable calling instant classics, we've decided to rank every opening track and every closing track from Tori's full-length studio albums of original, non-seasonal material.

This isn't necessarily about the best songs. It's about the art of opening the door to another world and knowing exactly how and when to leave it.

Can an explosive opener beat a slow-burning masterpiece? Is the perfect closer the one that offers resolution and ties a bow on the preceding 60–85 minutes? Or should a closer be one serpentine, provocative question mark that leaves us wanting more, needing desperately to start the album over again to discover new clues and figure out how what started out as a pretty good year ended in a little earthquake?

As always, we've brought our lists, our arguments, and our deeply held opinions that are all pretty much guaranteed to change again next week....

So, get out your parasol because you'll need to protect yourself from all the gold dust we'll be slinging.

Too much? Hmm. Oh well.

You’ll soon find it’s not a democracy on this pod, HONEY.

Opening tracks ranked: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0uVBgx1CPqfV4hBDccklr7?si=9Q-4Av0TTEiaPzesdvGv7w&utm_source=copy-link&pi=W7sc52dkQZO3Q

Closing tracks ranked: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6BMKhpQBb33FkfIV7lrivq?si=uCOGLHiEQKCQ4X2Y5n5RMg&utm_source=copy-link&pi=VY8P5A-LQt6wP

Sometimes the longest journeys can begin with the performance of a single live song. Over the course of a few unforgettable days, we traced the song lines through New Orleans, Austin, Dallas, and Nashville. We crossed state lines and time zones. We traded highways for own ways and back again, following a trail of songs that have been traveling beside us some for decades.

All of this unfolds nightly across cities and theater aisles and airport terminals and hotel lobbies, over late night meals and early morning departures, and spans Michelin star restaurants to hot dogs on the streets before bed. It's where familiar songs reveal new emotional landscapes, where strangers become friends, where old friends find each other again, and where the music quietly reminds us that we're part of something much larger than ourselves. Each city carried its own atmosphere, its own heartbeat, its own conversation with the music that filled the room.

Somewhere in between the anticipation, the reunions, the laughter, the long drives, and the delayed flights that stitched this past week together, we found something that we treasure every time we're lucky enough to do this. The chance for us to be together. So by the end of days like these, you stop remembering which city held what song. What you remember is the feeling of choosing some chasing something beautiful from one horizon to the next. So tonight we're looking back on

The first four shows that we attended of the In Times of Dragons US tour. And we're not here to rank the performances or settle on definitive favorites, but we're here to just trace the threads that connected everything, the surprises that stayed with us, the listeners we finally met, and old friends that we embraced and the quiet realization that this music continues to bring us back to each other and through that back to Tori. So please join us as we retrace the song lines as they sing.

It's happening!! 🤩 With Tori's 2026 U.S. tour kicking off in less than 48 hours, we're in full pre-tour geek mode. In this special tour-eve episode, we're answering your listener questions —mostly about the tour— plus a handful of fun surprises. Come join the frenzied excitement, the wild speculation, and the joyful anticipation.

Let's GO! ❤️🎹