text: who has influenced you most in music, and what has become of that influence? feel free to share your experience at length. thanks for commenting!! this might be tough, so i might have to put it to vote. but, i will definitely be looking at the honesty of the answer. i'm sure i'm not alone in this -- tori amos.      amongst my friends she's considered "uncool" (although having that cool/uncool mentality at my age, to me, is a little pathetic.)  but i've never once wavered in defending her.      i'm agnostic, and her music is one of only a handful of things that vouch for the existence of the divine.      even you don't like her songs (or, a more common complaint, her voice), you just cannot deny that she is extrordinarily talented -- she was the youngest person ever to get into the peabody conservatory at the age of five.  even though she comes from the very tired genre of the piano/vocalist/songwriter, her arangements, expression and voice manage to be wholy unique.      and those controvercial lyrics.    "god sometimes you just don't come through/do you need a woman to look after you?"  or on the stranger side,  "rabbit, where'd you put the keys girl?"  "father i killed my monkey..."   by listening to her music i was able to teach myself piano, an invaluable skill in my profession.