Tori Amos Explores 'Breakthroughs' On Take 5 With Zan Rowe Tonight

And just like that, five weeks after it began, the season finale of Take 5 With Zan Rowe airs tonight with Tori Amos.

Take 5 began as a radio podcast and has since blossomed into a podcast. Its latest iteration finds Zan Rowe at her interviewing best - on television, opposite artists in Melbourne or Sydney studios or iconic Nashville venues. 

Each episode has a different star with a love for music: it can be a lauded actor like Guy Pearce, a once-in-a-generation songwriter like Missy Higgins, our own country superstar Keith Urban, or popular sporting commentator Tony Armstrong.

The song choices never fail to surprise and thrill, and Armstrong, whose episode played last week, was no exception. Exploring life's twists with Rowe, Armstrong chose songs that made him feel joyful. From Donna Summer to Red Hot Chili Peppers to Solange, viewers were gifted with a new side of someone we know from television.

Tonight's episode features musical prodigy, Tori Amos. In an ABC Backstory article on the "dirty fight" that made her a trailblazer, Amos and Rowe go in-depth about attending the Peabody Conservatory Of Music as a child, trauma, rejection, and finding her vision. 

"I've been playing the piano since two and a half," Amos shares on tonight's episode of Take 5 With Zan Rowe. "There were members of the church who said to my parents, 'You need to get her proper training. It needs to be channelled, or it won't really go anywhere'. So, I auditioned for the Peabody Conservatory and was accepted at five years old." She challenged educators as a child, and Amos was insubordinate and expelled by the time she turned 11. 

"I had to accept I sound like a fairy on crack, and I had to write songs that fit this instrument," she says. "Not that fit something I don't have."

"The songwriter had to go: 'Okay, what are you doing? Because you don't sing like [Heart frontwoman] Ann Wilson. You don't sing like Janis [Joplin]. So, you need to think about this. But you don't just have to listen to the label and write little pop songs that they can get played on the radio. What are you doing? Be a musician, be an artist.'"

Rowe and Amos will take us "to Hollywood and [through] a lifetime of stories," per her Twitter. 

Previous episodes include Guy Pearce (20 September), Keith Urban (27 September), Missy Higgins (4 October), and Tony Armstrong (11 October). You can find extended episodes on the ABC Listen app.

Rowe has been an Australian radio mainstay for over 20 years. She has interviewed everybody, from Björk, Paul Kelly, Kylie Minogue, Peter Garrett, Brian Eno, and Jessica Mauboy, to Paul McCartney.

Check out the trailer below!