Cornflake Girl

"Cornflake Girl" is a song by American singer-songwriter and musician Tori Amos. It was released as the first single from her second studio album Under the Pink. It was released on January 10, 1994 by EastWest Records in the UK, and on May 5, 1994 by Atlantic Records in North America. Singer Merry Clayton provided backup singing and sang the 'man with the golden gun' bridge.

Background

The song reached #4 on the UK singles chart, and was Amos' most successful international hit at the time. In Australia, the song peaked at #19, and was placed at #35 on the radio station Triple J's 1994 Hottest 100 poll. The song was also ranked in Blender magazine's The 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born at #433.

Inspiration and meaning

The inspiration for "Cornflake Girl" came from a conversation she was having with a long time friend about female genital mutilation on the African continent, specifically how a close female family member would betray the victim by performing the procedure. Tori has said that growing up, the name they gave to girls who would hurt you despite close friendship was "cornflake girls."

Tori Amos

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Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos; August 22, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter, pianist and composer. She is a classically trained musician and has a mezzo-soprano vocal range. She has received eight Grammy nominations.

Having already begun composing instrumental pieces on piano, Amos won a full scholarship to the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, the youngest person ever to have been admitted, at age five. She was expelled at age eleven for, in her own words, insisting on playing by ear and because of her interest in popular rock music. Amos originally served as the lead singer of short-lived 1980s pop group Y Kant Tori Read before achieving her breakthrough as a solo artist at the forefront of a number of female singer-songwriters in the early 1990s. She has since become one of the world's most prominent female singer-songwriters whose songs have discussed a broad range of topics including sexuality, feminism, politics and religion. She was also noteworthy early in her solo career as one of the few alternative rock performers to use a piano as her primary instrument. Some of her charting singles include "Crucify", "Silent All These Years", "God", "Cornflake Girl", "Caught a Lite Sneeze", "Professional Widow", "Spark", "1000 Oceans", "Flavor", and "A Sorta Fairytale", her most commercially successful single in the U.S. to date. Amos has sold more than 12 million albums worldwide. She has been nominated for and won several awards in different genres, ranging from MTV VMAs to classical music with an Echo award in 2012.

Tori

Tori may refer to:

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Given name

Corn flakes

Corn flakes, or cornflakes, are a popular breakfast cereal made by toasting flakes of corn. The cereal was first created by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg in 1894 as a food that he thought would be healthy for the patients of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan where he was superintendent. The breakfast cereal proved popular among the patients and the Kellogg Company was set up to produce corn flakes for a wider public. A patent for the process was granted in 1896.

With corn flakes becoming popular in the wider community, other people, particularly a previous patient at the sanatorium, C. W. Post, started to make rival products. Various ingredients were added and different grains were used. Dr Kellogg continued to experiment and in 1928 started to manufacture Rice Krispies, another successful breakfast cereal. The trademark rooster that appears on the cereal packets and which first appeared in a television commercial may have been inspired by the Welsh word ceiliog, suggested by Kellogg's Welsh friend Nansi Richards. Nowadays there are many generic brands of corn flakes produced by various manufacturers. As well as being used as a breakfast cereal, the crushed flakes can be substituted for bread crumbs in a recipe and can be incorporated into many cooked dishes.

Girl

A girl is a female human from birth through childhood and adolescence to attainment of adulthood when she becomes a woman. The term girl may also be used to mean a young woman, and is often used as a synonym for daughter.

Etymology

The English word girl first appeared during the Middle Ages between 1250 and 1300 CE and came from the Anglo-Saxon words gerle (also spelled girle or gurle). The Anglo-Saxon word gerela meaning dress or clothing item also seems to have been used as a metonym in some sense.

Girl has meant any young unmarried woman since about 1530. Its first noted meaning for sweetheart is 1648. The earliest known appearance of girl-friend is in 1892 and girl next door, meant as a teenaged female or young woman with a kind of wholesome appeal, dates only to 1961.

Usage for adults

The word girl is sometimes used to refer to an adult female, usually a younger one. This usage may be considered derogatory or disrespectful in professional or other formal contexts, just as the term boy can be considered disparaging when applied to an adult man. Hence, this usage is often deprecative. It can also be used deprecatively when used to discriminate against children ("you're just a girl").