Abnormally Attracted to Sin is the tenth solo studio album by American singer-songwriter Tori Amos, released 19 May 2009, in standard and limited CD/DVD edition.

Amos lifted Abnormally Attracted to Sin's title from a line spoken by one of the main characters in the 1955 film Guys and Dolls.

[1] The album itself was written and conceived in two stages: first during Amos' 2007 world tour, while promoting American Doll Posse, followed by a creative spurt of writing and composing the following year, in July 2008, when Amos reconnected with her former music industry mentor Doug Morris while she was visiting California to promote her graphic-novel anthology, Comic Book Tattoo.

[2] During her stay in California that year, Amos revisited some of the old homes and haunts she had frequented as a twenty-something struggling artist in LA during the late '80s.

In past interviews, Amos has stated how songs such as "Crucify" and "Precious Things" were written while living behind this church, listening to endless sermons and worship-songs for hours at a time, alone, hurt and depressed following her failure as a musician (1988's Y Kant Tori Read), and her role as a victim and survivor of physical and sexual assault.

Memories of this time and these places, coupled with some of her own reflections and conclusions as a wife, mother and maturing woman, led to a spontaneous creative spell for the new album.

Adding credence to the notion that the song is deeply autobiographical, Amos chose to highlight the despair older, more mature women, such as herself, face: "I began to realize how serious this quiet, tragic problem was and that it's not okay to talk about it, whereas teen suicide - it gets discussed and it's almost something where there are [forums] for it.

16 video clips, one for each song except "Mary Jane", was released as "The Road Chronicles" on a bonus DVD for the deluxe edition of the album.

[9] Christian Lamb, who has worked with artists such as Madonna, Incubus, and Ozzy Osbourne, was initially hired by Amos to shoot footage of her 2007 American Doll Posse World Tour for an intended concert DVD release.

As a result of this sudden bit of inspiration when working on her next album, Amos requested that Lamb shoot additional footage for this project instead, forming the idea for a complementary "road chronicle" that would accompany Abnormally Attracted to Sin.

[11] That the original footage dates back to the previous album period can observed in the video clips as Amos' fashion, styling and appearance is the same as the artwork and promotion during the release and tour supporting American Doll Posse.

Seemingly inspired more by fashion, scenery and art, rather than by silent films or typical music videos, The Road Chronicles is composed of 16 vignettes in which Amos can be seen in dream-sequences infused with myriad metaphors, symbols, images, locations and haute couture fashion-pieces, meant to evoke and open up the themes and experiences tackled on each of the corresponding album songs.

Commenting on not pursuing a more traditional form of music videos, Amos stated: "I began to really think about the idea of a story being told through the visuals and yet the song itself giving us all the information – that’s our dialogue.

"[6] The visuals are described by Lamb as "an intimate portrait of Tori travelling through arresting cityscapes such as London, New Orleans, LA and San Francisco".

[15] "[Amos's 10th] studio release finds her in full command of her expanded arsenal, creating an overall sound that's as psychedelic as it is classic," wrote Billboard, adding, "the sounds coupled with [the] lyrical content [found on the album] — metaphors rendered through literary heroines, religious imagery, exotic food, cities as characters, triple entendres — make for a singular tapestry that, as the artist matures, requires less and less prior knowledge of her catalog to enjoy.

Rather than suffocating her songs under a pretentious broad construct, here Amos allows them to stand on their own merits and, in turn, demonstrates the superior craft upon which she first made her name.

"[19] Reviews in Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q[23] were less favorable, although, while criticizing it as a "long haul", the latter did admit that the album contained "some of the best [songs] Amos has written."

All tracks are written by Tori AmosAmos finished writing and composing Abnormally Attracted to Sin during the spring and summer of 2008.

Of the trip-hop and electronic influences on the album, the artist stated: "I want to make audio mescaline",[31] referring to the hallucinogenic, LSD-like drug.

[32] On developing the sound of one of the songs and of the album in general, Amos declared, "It became much more of a technology experiment [with] the piano being there but in this strange world.

[35] Like all of Amos's post-Atlantic releases, Abnormally Attracted to Sin is offered in both standard and limited edition versions, the latter including a DVD containing "The Road Chronicles" visualettes for each album track, albeit in a different running order.

[44] The album track "Flavor" was later re-worked as both an orchestral and an electronic remix for Amos' Gold Dust retrospective compilation, reaching the no.