Tori Amos, whose most famous song, "Me and a Gun," is an a cappella description of her own real-life rape at gunpoint, wanted to do an album of rock songs originally written and performed by men, so she asked male acquaintances for the names of songs that made an impression on them. Cover albums are usually put together to pay tribute to influences, but the record that Amos came up with, "Strange Little Girls," is poles apart from tribute. It sounds like a challenge.

Sometimes, Amos' take on a particular number (and artist) is clear. Her version of Eminem's " '97 Bonnie & Clyde" is recited in a sleepy, whispered drawl: the voice of the dead (or dying) woman in the car trunk who is listening to her murderer-husband explaining the situation to their toddler. The Boomtown Rats' "I Don't Like Mondays," which is about an adolescent girl opening fire at her high school, is here sung as if the girl were on medication.

Amos is both appreciated and derided for her operatic tendencies, and the two above-mentioned cuts are striking for their dramatic depth alone. One can better appreciate her musical gifts on Lou Reed's "New Age," from which she extracts the song's romanticism and fluffs it up like a pillow. On the other hand, the lush, dreamy background of the 10cc hit "I'm Not in Love" is replaced by horror-movie sound effects: Melancholy becomes despair.