The DIY attitude that drove Tom Waits’ finest album

Waits’ gritty Rain Dogs depicted a dark vision of New York’s underbelly, and was shaped by its ‘junkyard orchestra’ of ...
Rolling Stone

Tom Waits Shares Rare Performance of ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues’ in Italian Documentary

Tom Waits has released his performance of his 1976 song “Tom Traubert’s Blues” for the Italian docuseries Il Fattore Umano (The Human Factor), which aired earlier this year. Waits participated in the ...
American Songwriter

4 Times Tom Waits Told Stories Better Than Any Novelist

Mule Variations from 1999 is a fan favorite album from Tom Waits. “Take It With Me” is just one standout track from that album. This song is a divergence from the typical Waits song. Rather than ...
Rolling Stone

Hear Tom Waits’ Unreleased, Stripped-Down, ‘Spiritual’ Version of ‘Get Behind the Mule’

To mark the 25th anniversary of both Tom Waits’ Mule Variations and the record label Anti, an unreleased “Spiritual” rendition of the standout “Get Behind the Mule” has been unearthed for the first ...
Forbes

Tom Waits Turns 75: 11 Of His Greatest Lyrical Songs

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about music and the business of music. Today, December 7, is Tom Waits’ seventy-fifth birthday. What better way to honor ...
Paste

Tom Waits Broke Out of His Little World On “Downtown Train”

Rain Dogs is forty years old today. I won’t get into all of it, because there is simply too much to get into, but I am thinking most about what we encounter at the record’s 46-minute mark: a song ...