Deep Album Cuts Vol. 331: Tom Waits
I ranked every Tom Waits album for Spin a few weeks back, and that was a really fun catalog to dive into and revisit my favorites, while I was working on that I also put together this playlist.
2. I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You
3. New Coat of Paint
4. Emotional Weather Report
5. Tom Traubert's Blue (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen)
6. I Never Talk To Strangers with Bette Midler
7. Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis
8. Downtown
9. Frank's Wild Years
10. Underground
11. Time
12. Clap Hands
13. Way Down In The Hole
14. The Earth Died Screaming
15. Crossroads
16. Picture In A Frame
17. What's He Building?
18. Kommienezuspadt
19. Another Man's Vine
20. Make It Rain
21. Walk Away
22. Face To The Highway
Tracks 1 and 2 from Closing Time (1973)
Track 3 from The Heart of Saturday Night (1974)
Track 4 from Nighthawks at the Diner (1975)
Track 5 from Small Change (1976)
Track 6 from Foreign Affairs (1977)
Track 7 from Blue Valentine (1978)
Track 8 from Heartattack and Vine (1980)
Tracks 9 and 10 from Swordfishtrombones (1983)
Tracks 11 and 12 from Rain Dogs (1985)
Track 13 from Franks Wild Years (1987)
Track 14 from Bone Machine (1992)
Track 15 from The Black Rider (1993)
Tracks 16 and 17 from Mule Variations (1999)
Track 18 from Alice (2002)
Track 19 from Blood Money (2002)
Track 20 from Real Gone (2004)
Track 21 from Hot To The TouchOrphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards (2006)
Track 22 from Bad As Me (2011)
Tom Waits has released singles from most of his albums and the occasional music video, but it feels like the world agreed a long time ago that he was simply going to settle for being as famous as you could be without a chart hit, his voice was just a little too far over the line of acceptability for any radio format, even rock. So he's one of those artists where they're kind of all deep cuts, or none of them are. In any case, I avoided songs Waits released as singles, although other artists have made some of them famous.
Waits's top streaming song, "I Hope I Don't Fall In Love With You," has been covered by Hootie & The Blowfish and 10,000 Maniacs. His next biggest streaming track, "Underground," was in the animated movie Robots. "Grapefruit Moon" was the song David Geffen heard Waits perform at the Troubadour that led him to sign Waits to Asylum Records. "Way Down In The Hole" is famously the theme song for HBO's "The Wire" (and I put it next to the Waits song that actually namechecks Baltimore, "Clap Hands").
I grew up with Bette Midler as a household name and learned about Tom Waits as if he was a rumor or dirty secret, so it was surreal to learn that they dated and collaborated around the time Midler was becoming famous. It makes sense to me now, though, they're both outsized personalities with retro sensibilities. And I do like that song, the way Waits says "you must be reading my mail!" gets me every time.
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on Friday, November 17, 2023 at 9:34 AM.
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