Hello is a band fronted by singer Melissa Lefton, whose history in the music business has been an infamous disaster. Partnered up with Scott Hollingsworth, both musically and romantically, the two created their self-titled debut album "Hello" and released it on a double CD with absolutely no advertising or promotion.

Picking up where Melissa's failed debut "Melicious" left off, the album continues on themes of dissatisfaction and the monotony of life. The lyrics are wry and often times as sharp as they are cruel, but unlike "Melicious" which seemed musically drawn from the electronic sounds of the 80's, "Hello" gets it's musical roots from experimental Beatles-esque rock music from the 70's.

At one time a hugely sought after release, Y Kant Tori Read was the name of both the band fronted by Tori Amos and their only album.

Because of the rarity of actual copies of the album, countless bootleg versions have been released; so much so that, in the mid 90's, an online FAQ explaining the differences between all of the bootlegs was created.

There are three commercial versions available: A 12" album (non picture disc,) a CD and a cassette. The best way to tell if you have a legitimate copy of the CD release is that the disc is silver with black text and a red ring around the outside. To date, the cassette and vinyl have not been bootlegged, with the exception of a picture disc vinyl released around 2000, which is very much a bootleg.

There are two promotional versions of the album; one one cassette, and one on 12" vinyl. The vinyl has a gold promo info stamp on the front, whereas the cassette has promo information printed directly onto the insert. Often times the promotional version of the vinyl has a cutout mark in the upper lefthand corner.

Ironically, non-promotional versions of the 12" vinyl are much rarer to find than the promo version. This is because so few albums sold that most of the commercial versions were shipped back to the record label, given a cut-out and/or promo stamp, and re-shipped as promos.

This extremely rare 12" promotional vinyl single of Tori Amos' hit single "Spark" is notable in that it contains an instrumental version of the song that, to date (2009), has never been included on any other release, in any other format. This vinyl is THE ONLY place one can find this instrumental version of the song. The artwork is similar to that of the various other (primarily CD) releases of the single, but the oversized vinyl packaging really brings out the beauty of Katarina Jebb's infamous "life sized photocopier" imagery.

This CD single for Winter came early in Tori Amos' career and helped establish her penchant for unique packaging and glorious b-sides. Labeled as a "Limited Edition" on the front, this ended up a misnomer as it was far easier to find that the two UK issued versions of the single. (By 1996 people could still find new copies for sale in record stores, whereas the UK singles were long sold out.) The special packaging contains an insert with "handwritten" song lyrics.

This item was established to be a bootleg release the same year it came out. It was distributed as a "promo" by the same company which produced the notorious bootleg picture vinyl for the album "Y Kant Tori Read". In a market of serious collectors, it is virtually worthless. It's only real worth is as an oddity. Don't be misled into thinking this is a legitimate promotional item released by the record label. It simply isn't!

This notoriously mishandled CD single release was one in a string of botch jobs by Atlantic Records, Tori Amos' label, but by far the worst; and to most, it signaled their complete disinterest in her career.

Originally meant to be a two disc CD single set issued in the UK and also Australia, it is ironically easier to find versions of the singles that do NOT contain errors than to find ones that do.

Originally slated for release in October, with the plan for one disc to be limited edition, they were pushed back to November of 1999. The Australian versions saw their release in October.

The best way to distinguish an Australian pressing is simply by looking at the disc, which should contain the "Warner Music Australia" symbol on it.

The various mispressings/printings are as follows:

The majority of the "part two" copies of the single mistakenly play the tracks from the "part one" single.

In some cases the "part two" copy of the Australian single actually plays a full length album by the band "Everything but the Girl". The only way to distinguish this is to have an open copy and look at the back of the disc to see how much data is on it (or, of course, to play it.)

On all "part one" copies of the single, the writing credits mistakenly attribute the song "Famous Blue Raincoat" to Tori Amos
and the song "Twinkle" to Leonard Cohen; they should be the reverse. Additionally the song title is mistakenly shortened to just "Blue Raincoat".