Song Analysis

[song analysis coming soon! In the meantime, you can read Tori’s quotes]

"I’ve written a song called ’Sugar’ about those people you meet that you’ll never have a relationship with, but if you could have 25 minutes alone with them, you’d have this incredible affair. There’s something magical and you want to merge with it in every way possible. That’s why I could imagine being a carnivore thousands of years ago; you want to merge with them so intensely you could almost eat them. Say we didn’t have bodies and blood and guts, but just released these light energies like colours, then we could just merge. That’s what making love is really about. Your blue connects with my pale orange; a little bit of fire-engine red with your lime green! That’s what they were doing when they ate someone, like their lover or a beaten enemy. It’s a bit different with the Romans buggering the guys they beat - it all gets distorted down the line. They were merging; that’s what they were doing." (Q, February 1992)

“I was in love with this boy when I was five years old and I knew we could really make it work. I was trying to convince him and he took this hammer and hit me with it really hard and, you’re going to really hate me for this, but I was so stupid, I tried to get my dad, the minister, to invite them over because I wanted to see him and conquer his heart. I was going to give him bubble-gum and then he’d let me into his treehouse to play with his toy machine-guns. I just wanted to be with him so bad.

Q: did it work out?

Tori: No, never. He called me a nerd.” (Q, May 1994)

“So, I had to get this song together in about 2 hours. And this boy really pissed me off, because I had a crush on him, right…and he’d been making tea for me for nine months. And so, the whole thing is…he would sit there and ask me… Now if you’re making tea for a girl, right, for 9 months don’t you think, guys. I mean help me out here. Your noodle, it can hold a lot of information, right? But don’t you think, you can remember how many sugars a girl takes in her tea after 9 months!” (Hey Jupiter US single, to introduce the song live)