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FYI/TMI: Moscowitz Exits Warner, Johnny Depp Makes Pirate Music

Cameron Strang to assume president and CEO responsibilities; Depp teams with Iggy Pop, Courtney Love and others for new compilation album

GRAMMYs/Dec 3, 2014 - 05:06 am

(In an effort to keep you fully informed, and fully entertained, below we present today's FYI and TMI — news you need and news that's, well, sometimes needless….)

FYI …

Moscowitz To Exit Warner Bros. Records
Todd Moscowitz is resigning from his post as president and CEO fof Warner Bros. Records, according to a Billboard.biz report. Details on timing for Moscowitz's exit were not revealed, but he will be replaced by current Warner/Chappell Music Chairman and CEO Cameron Strang. Warner Bros. Chairman Rob Cavallo and Co-President and COO Livia Tortella will now report to Strang.

TMI …

Johnny Depp's Pirate Mix
Johnny Depp
, aka Captain Jack Sparrow, is taking his big-screen pirating skills into the studio in the form of a new compilation album titled Son Of Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs And Chanteys. The album follows an initial volume in 2006 called Rogue's Gallery and will feature guest appearances by artists such as Iggy Pop, Courtney Love, Keith Richards, Patti Smith, and Tom Waits, among others. Tracks on the two-disc set include "The Mermaid," featuring Depp dueting with Smith; "Shenandoah" featuring Richards and Waits; "A**hole Rules The Navy" by Iggy Pop and A Hawk And A Hacksaw; and "Rio Grande" featuring Love and R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe. The album is set for release on Feb. 18, 2013. Could Depp be up for a second GRAMMY nomination at the 56th Annual GRAMMY Awards in 2014? Yo ho, yo ho, we'll have to wait and see.

5 Takeaways From The Rolling Stones' 'Hackney Diamonds'
Ron Wood, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones

Photo: DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images

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5 Takeaways From The Rolling Stones' 'Hackney Diamonds'

On their first album in 18 years, the Rolling Stones prove that age ain’t nothing but a number. 'Hackney Diamonds' is a vital-sounding return-to-form which channels the anger, lust, and vigor of their rock 'n' roll heyday.

GRAMMYs/Oct 20, 2023 - 01:07 pm

"Is my future all in the past?" laments Keith Richards on "Tell Me Straight," the grungiest number from the Rolling Stones' 26th studio effort (or their 24th if you're from the UK), Hackney Diamonds. Despite approaching the age of 80, a milestone Mick Jagger passed this summer, the answer isn't the obvious one.  

Indeed, while most of their peers have long since settled into retirement, rock 'n' roll's most enduring partnership is still attempting to extend their legacy. And for the first time since 2005's A Bigger Bang, with an album of largely original material, too. It's an approach which appears to have re-energized the Stones so strongly they now sound, musically anyway, like a band bursting out of the blocks rather than one nearing the finish line.  

In fact, the group were so productive during their recording sessions that they already have a follow-up 75 percent completed. If it's even half as vibrant as its predecessor, then fans are in for another down and dirty treat. 

Of course, Hackney Diamonds is inevitably tinged with sadness, too, being their first LP since the death of Charlie Watts in 2021. However, with recording sessions beginning the year previously — the pandemic, Richards' arthritis struggles, and apparently Jagger's general lack of enthusiasm causing the lengthy delay — the legendary drummer still makes a couple of posthumous contributions. 

But as implied by its title, a London slang term for the remains of a window smashed by thieves, the record's overall tone is loud, punchy, and purposeful. Here are five takeaways from the band's latest triumph.  

The Band Get By With A Little Help From Their Friends 

Boasting appearances from no fewer than four genuine musical icons, including two with knighthoods to their name, Hackney Diamonds is by far the most star-studded album in the Stones' 61-year career.  

That's Elton John tinkling the ivories on the funky "Get Close" and barroom stomper "Live By the Sword," while Paul McCartney appears to have been forgiven for last year's spot of shade-throwing ("I'm not sure I should say it, but they're a blues cover band, that's sort of what the Stones are"): he provides the fuzzed-up basslines on the expletive-filled punk of "Bite My Head Off.

Yet it’s the double whammy of Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder on the slow-burning "Sweet Sounds of Heaven" who make the biggest impression. The former delivers the strongest powerhouse vocals of her career during a call-and-response which echoes the Merry Clayton-assisted classic "Gimme Shelter." Wonder, who toured with the Stones back in the '70s, meanwhile, works his usual magic on the keys to imbue the seven-minute epic — possibly the finest track the Stones have recorded this century — with an authentic gospel edge.  

The Stones Aren't Afraid To Get Nostalgic 

While Hackney Diamonds largely avoids talk of mortality, loss or other somber themes you may expect from a band whose youngest permanent member, Ronnie Wood, is 76, it's not afraid to get a little nostalgic.  

The blistering "Whole Wide World" essentially plays out like a beginner's guide to the Stones' '60s years, whether it's reminiscing about their pre-fame stint in a "filthy flat in Fulham" or bemoaning the era when both the tabloids and the cops watched their every move. And amid the bluesy harmonica and slide guitars on "Dreamy Skies," Jagger pines for a getaway with nothing but an AM radio playing country crooner Hank Williams for company. 

The trip down memory lane most longtime fans will be interested in, however, is "Live by the Sword." Thanks to appearances from Watts and former bassist Bill Wyman, it's the closest the Stones have got to their imperial phase line-up since 1989's Steel Wheels.  

Mick Jagger Is Still A Horndog 

He might now be an octogenarian, yet judging by the amount of relationship talk on Hackney Diamonds, Jagger still has the libido of a rocker half his age.  

"Driving Me Too Hard" and "Bite My Head Off" both add to the Stones' arsenal of woman trouble anthems, while on "Get Close," Jagger roams around the streets at midnight to make a potentially lascivious pact ("I bargained with the devil, I need heaven for one night").

Further evidence the singer still isn't ready for the pipe and slippers lifestyle yet comes with "Mess It Up," a disco-infused tale of a vengeful ex who's stolen his mobile phone, unlocked his passwords, and shared a particular photo among all her friends. We're left to guess how incriminating said image is.    

It Brings Things Full Circle 

Hackney Diamonds doesn't entirely abandon the covers approach that defined 2016's Blues and Lonesome. Following ten original compositions, it wraps things up with a stripped-back rendition of "Rolling Stone Blues," the Muddy Waters classic which played a significant part in Jagger and Richards' story. 

Not only did the 1950 number — a loose interpretation of Delta blues standard "Catfish Blues" — inspire the band’s name, it was also one of several records a teenage Richards was carrying under his arm during that pivotal train station reunion with his childhood friend. Recognizing they both shared similar musical tastes, the pair began hanging out again and the rest is rock and roll history.  

This is the first time the Stones have celebrated such a sliding doors moment on record and should the proposed 25th album fail to materialize, a hugely touching way to bring things full circle. 

It's Their Best Album In More Than 40 Years 

The Stones have occasionally captured the brilliance of their chart-topping days over the past 40 years, with the mammoth world tour-launching Steel Wheels, outtakes collection Tattoo You, and their last MTV hurrah Voodoo Lounge all containing best of-worthy material. But Hackney Diamonds is their first LP that can be considered as truly essential since 1978 return-to-form Some Girls.  

While the majority of latter-day Stones efforts have come across as merely promotional tools for their latest stadium trek, their latest stands on its own two feet. In fact, there isn't a dud among its 11 tracks, with everyone from co-producer Don Was to regular live musicians Matt Clifford, Darryl Jones, and Steve Jordan at the top of their game.  

"I don't want to be big headed," Jagger told Jimmy Fallon at the album's East London launch last month. "But we wouldn't have put this record out if we hadn't really liked it." The rock god needn't have worried about sounding immodest. In fact, he could have got away with shouting about it from the rooftops. 

7 Reasons Why The Rolling Stones' 'Goats Head Soup' Is Worth Savoring

GRAMMY Rewind: Kendrick Lamar Honors Hip-Hop's Greats While Accepting Best Rap Album GRAMMY For 'To Pimp a Butterfly' In 2016
Kendrick Lamar

Photo: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

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GRAMMY Rewind: Kendrick Lamar Honors Hip-Hop's Greats While Accepting Best Rap Album GRAMMY For 'To Pimp a Butterfly' In 2016

Upon winning the GRAMMY for Best Rap Album for 'To Pimp a Butterfly,' Kendrick Lamar thanked those that helped him get to the stage, and the artists that blazed the trail for him.

GRAMMYs/Oct 13, 2023 - 06:01 pm

Updated Friday Oct. 13, 2023 to include info about Kendrick Lamar's most recent GRAMMY wins, as of the 2023 GRAMMYs.

A GRAMMY veteran these days, Kendrick Lamar has won 17 GRAMMYs and has received 47 GRAMMY nominations overall. A sizable chunk of his trophies came from the 58th annual GRAMMY Awards in 2016, when he walked away with five — including his first-ever win in the Best Rap Album category.

This installment of GRAMMY Rewind turns back the clock to 2016, revisiting Lamar's acceptance speech upon winning Best Rap Album for To Pimp A Butterfly. Though Lamar was alone on stage, he made it clear that he wouldn't be at the top of his game without the help of a broad support system. 

"First off, all glory to God, that's for sure," he said, kicking off a speech that went on to thank his parents, who he described as his "those who gave me the responsibility of knowing, of accepting the good with the bad."

Looking for more GRAMMYs news? The 2024 GRAMMY nominations are here!

He also extended his love and gratitude to his fiancée, Whitney Alford, and shouted out his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates. Lamar specifically praised Top Dawg's CEO, Anthony Tiffith, for finding and developing raw talent that might not otherwise get the chance to pursue their musical dreams.

"We'd never forget that: Taking these kids out of the projects, out of Compton, and putting them right here on this stage, to be the best that they can be," Lamar — a Compton native himself — continued, leading into an impassioned conclusion spotlighting some of the cornerstone rap albums that came before To Pimp a Butterfly.

"Hip-hop. Ice Cube. This is for hip-hop," he said. "This is for Snoop Dogg, Doggystyle. This is for Illmatic, this is for Nas. We will live forever. Believe that."

To Pimp a Butterfly singles "Alright" and "These Walls" earned Lamar three more GRAMMYs that night, the former winning Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song and the latter taking Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (the song features Bilal, Anna Wise and Thundercat). He also won Best Music Video for the remix of Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood." 

Lamar has since won Best Rap Album two more times, taking home the golden gramophone in 2018 for his blockbuster LP DAMN., and in 2023 for his bold fifth album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.

Watch Lamar's full acceptance speech above, and check back at GRAMMY.com every Friday for more GRAMMY Rewind episodes. 

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12 Actors Who Have Bands: Ryan Gosling, Keanu Reeves, Zoë Kravitz & More
Dogstar feat. Keanu Reeves

Photo: Brian Bowen Smith

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12 Actors Who Have Bands: Ryan Gosling, Keanu Reeves, Zoë Kravitz & More

The stage, screen and soundfield have always been intertwined. Just look at the music made by acclaimed actors from Ryan Gosling to Zoë Kravitz and Keanu Reeves.

GRAMMYs/Oct 2, 2023 - 07:31 pm

Singers in movies? It’s the most natural thing in the world. Elvis Presley did it, time and time again. More than six decades after Love Me Tender, Harry Styles and Jason Isbell have made the move from stage to screen. In between, you have 8 Mile, Crossroads, Crazy Heart… the list rolls on and on.

How about the reverse, though — actors who have bands, as a separate outlet from their work on the silver screen? There’s a rich history there. Ryan Gosling, currently in the spotlight for his witty Barbie performance, has played in the duo Dead Man’s Bones for some 15 years.

Again, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Jack Black’s film legacy runs in parallel to Tenacious D, the comedy-rock duo rocking our worlds since 1994. After taking the 2000s and 2010s off, Keanu Reeves’ Dogstar returns with Somewhere Between the Power Lines and the Palm Trees on Oct. 6.

Granted, this list doesn’t include actors who simply play music, like Jeff Bridges and Jeff Goldblum. Nor would it include Fred Armisen, the bandleader for “Late Night With Seth Meyers.” And if an actor was in a band but no longer is, like Jason Schwartzman in Phantom Planet, that would fall outside this metric.

In honor of this cross-media convergence, let’s take a non-chronological, by-no-means-exhaustive trip through the world of actors who have bands.

Keanu Reeves

Since 1991 — the year Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey was released — Reeves has rocked out in Dogstar.

They released their debut album, Our Little Visionary, in 1996; four years later, they rang in the new millennium with Happy Ending. Twenty -three years later, Dogstar released the uplifting single “Everything Turns Around,” with the full album on its way.

Jared Leto

Like fellow rockers Dogstar, Thirty Seconds to Mars — featuring Jared Leto and his brother Shannon Leto — have a new album in 2023: It’s the End of the World but It’s a Beautiful Day.

Though they’ve taken long breaks since their 1998 formation, they never fell out of the industry; since their 2002 self-titled debut, they’ve managed a couple of albums per decade.

Michael Cera

Lighthearted indie rockers  the Long Goodbye have not one, but two Hollywood actors in it — Michael Cera of Juno, Superbad and more, as well as Clark Duke, who you may remember from Hot Tub Time Machine. (He was also in bands Mister Heavenly with Honus Honus of Man Man, Nicholas Thorburn of Islands and the Unicorns, and Joe Plummer of Modest Mouse and the Shins.)

Zooey Deschanel

The rootsy, twee indie poppers She & Him seemed to typify the mid-2000s upon arrival, and maintained that charm as that milieu gave way to others. These days, the duo of M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel is content to cover classic Christmas songs and Brian Wilson.

Zoë Kravitz

The actress, singer and model — who’s recently been in blockbusters like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The Batman — sings in the band Lolawolf, along with drummer and producer Jimmy Gianopoulos. (They’ve worked with eight-time GRAMMY winner Jack Antonoff.)

Michael Imperioli

The "Sopranos" star plays in the three-piece New York indie rock band ZOPA; as per Imperioli’s interest in Eastern-inspired transcendence, the band name means “patience” in Tibetan.

Steve Martin

While he may not have a regular band, the Father of the Bride star and banjo picker has made acclaimed work with the Steep Canyon Rangers, including in contexts like the much-missed radio show “A Prairie Home Companion.”

Michael C. Hall

Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum: that’s a mouthful! It’s also the name of “Dexter” and “Six Feet Under” star Michael C. Hall’s band with Blondie’s Matt Katz-Bohen and the Wallflowers’ Pedro Yanowitz.

Penn Badgley

The "Gossip Girl" and "You" star is the lead singer of Mothxr — which also includes the aforementioned Gianopoulos. While they haven’t released an album since their 2016 debut, “We'll all be making music for the rest of our lives,” Badgley has said.

Hugh Laurie

Dr. House himself hasmade blues music for years, and plays in the all-actor group Band From TV for charity. (Among its ranks: Greg Gunberg of “Alias” fame and James Denton from “Desperate Housewives.”)

Johnny Depp

Back in the 1970s, Alice Cooper formed the “Hollywood Vampires” drinking club, which included two Beatles and Harry Nilsson. He picked up the mantle once again with his band of the same name, which features Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and Johnny Depp.

Kevin Bacon

The Apollo 13 and Footloose star — as in “six degrees of…” — plays in the Bacon Brothers with his brother Michael; their latest album, The Way We Love, arrived in 2020.

Clearly, the conceit of a music-making screen star remains fresh — whether you’re a Bacon, Laurie or Depp enjoyer, or any other kind of pop culture disciple under the sun.

Road To Barbie The Album: How Mark Ronson Dolled Up The Movie's Polished Pop Soundtrack


Songbook: A Comprehensive Guide To Tom Waits’ Evolution From L.A. Romantic To Subterranean Innovator
Tom Waits

From left: David Corio/Redferns; Paul Natkin/Getty Images; Scott Gries/Getty Images; Richard E. Aaron/Redferns

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Songbook: A Comprehensive Guide To Tom Waits’ Evolution From L.A. Romantic To Subterranean Innovator

As Tom Waits’ series of Island Records releases from the ‘80s and ‘90s are being reissued, take an album-by-album trip through the legendary singer/songwriter’s significant body of work.

GRAMMYs/Sep 20, 2023 - 06:44 pm

When Tom Waits warned on "Underground," the first song on his transformational 1983 album Swordfishtrombones, "there’s a rumblin’ groan down below," he very well could have been describing the artistic awakening that made him a legend.

Once an earnest yet good-humored singer/songwriter, Tom Waits is the rare artist in the past 50 years to successfully pull off something as radical as a complete artistic reinvention. A songwriter with a taste for the dark and grotesque as much as the theatrical, Waits has built up a catalog heavy on bizarre characters, morbid nursery rhymes, gruff junkyard blues and a uniquely unconventional take on rock music. And though it took some experimentation, trial and error and eventually getting married to arrive on the sound we hear today, he’s made a five-decade career of embracing sounds on the fringe and turning them into memorable melodies.

A Southern California native who got his start playing folk clubs in San Diego before relocating to Los Angeles in the 1970s, Tom Waits debuted as a relatively conventional singer/songwriter with a twinge of blues and jazz in his bones. And where his earliest records found him singing with more of a raspy croon, he adopted a vocal growl more spiritually akin to Louis Armstrong and Captain Beefheart. 

Waits never quite fit in alongside peers such as Jackson Browne or James Taylor. His instincts often pushed himself somewhere a little dirtier and darker, favoring tales of vagabonds and outcasts told with an inebriated sentimentality and irreverent humor. Throughout his decades-long career, the two-time GRAMMY winner never let go of the emotional honesty in his songwriting. 

Waits has joked that he makes two types of songs: grim reapers and grand weepers. The former became his staple sound in the 1980s after he married longtime creative partner Kathleen Brennan and began his decade-long tenure on Island Records, which still occasionally found him returning to the latter via less frequent but no less disarming ballads. 

What once was a songbook reflective of the bars and familiar streets evolved into surreal dens of iniquity and theaters of the grotesque. Waits' knack for storytelling and character development only strengthened over the years, even as his songs took more oddball and ominous shape. Swordfishtrombones' "Sixteen Shells from a Thirty-Ought Six" follows a hunter following a crow into a Moby Dick-like epic; spoken word standout "What’s He Building In There?," from 1999’s Mule Variations, prompts the listener to ponder who’s really up to no good. 

Though his record sales have been modest, Waits' songs have been covered by the likes of Rod Stewart and Eagles, and he’s collaborated with everyone from Bette Midler to Keith Richards. His songwriting and unique musical aesthetic have influenced records by Andrew Bird, Neko Case, Morphine and PJ Harvey.

As Waits’ acclaimed series of albums on Island Records from the ‘80s and ‘90s are being reissued in remastered form — some for the first time on vinyl in decades — GRAMMY.com revisits the legendary singer/songwriter’s significant body of work via each of his studio albums. Press play on the Spotify playlist below, or visit Apple Music, Pandora, and Amazon Music to enter Waits' sonic wonderland of '70s era  ballads and his plethora of twisted narratives and experimental sounds.

The Barroom Balladeer

Though often treated to his own idiosyncratic filter, Waits’ early output in the ‘70s reflected the glamor and sleaze of his Los Angeles surroundings. 

Closing Time (1973)

Making his debut at the height of the ‘70s singer/songwriter boom, Tom Waits revealed only slight glimpses of his myriad idiosyncrasies on 1973’s Closing Time. Heavily composed of ballads, the album’s sound is a result of a compromise between Waits’ own preference for more jazz-leaning material and producer Jerry Yester’s penchant for folk. 

Despite, or perhaps because of, that creative tension, Closing Time has a unique character. A sense of wanderlust and escape within its 12 piano-based songs feels like a jazzier, West Coast counterpart to Bruce Springsteen. Waits imbues the call of the road with a sense of melancholy on gorgeous opener "Ol’ 55" and gives a hefty tug at the heartstrings on the aching "Martha." He kicks up the tempo on "Ice Cream Man." Closing Time is often at its best when it’s more quietly haunting, like on the bluesy "Virginia Avenue."

Though the album didn’t initially garner much critical or commercial attention, it’s since become regarded as one of the finest moments of Waits’ early recordings. It also quickly earned the respect and admiration of other artists, with various songs from Closing Time being covered by Bette Midler, Eagles and Tim Buckley. 

The Heart of Saturday Night (1974)

After establishing himself with the romantic ballads of his debut album, Waits waded deeper into the waters of boho jazz and beat poetry in its follow-up, The Heart of Saturday Night. 

Waits shares his perspective from the piano bench and the barstool, occasionally delving into a sing-speak delivery against upright bass and brushed-drum backing. Throughout, Waits serves up colorfully embellished imagery about nights on the town and getting soused on the moon. Though not as experimental or sophisticated as some of his later recordings, The Heart of Saturday Night nonetheless finds Waits in a more playful mood, more overtly showcasing his sense of humor and penchant for a particular kind of down-and-out protagonist. Fittingly, the album's title track was directly inspired by Jack Kerouac.

The Heart of Saturday Night is somewhat autobiographical in that it’s one of the few albums that repeatedly features references to his youth growing up in San Diego. Most famously on "San Diego Serenade," as well as in his narrative of driving through Oceanside in "Diamonds on My Windshield," and his name-drop of Napoleone’s Pizza House, the pizzeria in National City where he worked as a teenager, in "The Ghosts of Saturday Night."

Nighthawks at the Diner (1975)

As Tom Waits further established himself as a singer/songwriter more at home in the naugahyde and second-hand smoke of a seedy nightclub than a folk festival, he sought to replicate the atmosphere of a jazz club on his third album. It’s not a live album in a literal sense; Waits invited a small crowd into the Record Plant studio in Los Angeles on two nights in July of 1975, and though the venue is artifice, the crowd reactions are genuine. 

More heavily rooted in jazz than Waits’ first two albums, Nighthawks at the Diner mostly follows a particular pattern: An "intro" track featuring some witty barfly banter, followed by an actual song. Introducing each song with a round of inebriated wordplay ("you’ve been standing on the corner of Fifth and Vermouth," "Well I order my veal cutlet, Christ, it just left the plate and walked down to the end of the counter…") is a bit of a gimmick, yet for all its loose, freewheeling feel, the album features some of his best early songs, including "Eggs and Sausage," "Warm Beer and Cold Women" and "Big Joe and Phantom 309." 

Releasing a manufactured live album early on proved a canny gambit for Tom Waits and resulted in his highest charting album up to that date. And it’s easy to see why: Nighthawks showcased the raconteur persona that’d come to define much of Waits' work to come. 

The Bluesy Bohemian

Embracing a grittier sound and a more character-driven approach to storytelling, Tom Waits entered a period of creative growth in the second half of the ‘70s that saw him balancing a darker tone with a wry sense of humor.

Small Change (1976)

On his second and third albums, a jazz influence and increasingly prominent humor saw Waits  developing not just as a distinctive personality, but as a character. His raspy growl deepened onSmall Change, as Waits'  barfly persona finds himself in increasingly seedier surroundings. This new area is  best showcased through the amusingly unsexy striptease scat of "Pasties and a G-String" and the surreal and misty eyed "The Piano Has Been Drinking."

Small Change isn’t nearly as jokey as the previous year’s Nighthawks at the Diner, but Waits carries a persistent smirk as he rattles through a laundry list of hucksterish advertising slogans in the carnival-barker beat jazz of "Step Right Up": "It gets rid of unwanted facial hair, It gets rid of embarrassing age spots, It delivers the pizza." He even ramps up an element of danger in the noir poetry of "Small Change (Got Rained on With His Own .38)".

Still, the heartache and romance remains within the album’s best ballads, including the gorgeous opener "Tom Traubert’s Blues" and the imagined depiction of a lonely waitress in "Invitation to the Blues." 

Foreign Affairs (1977)

Tom Waits’ fifth album Foreign Affairs unexpectedly became one of his most consequential releases. 

A rare Waits album that opens with an instrumental ("Cinny’s Waltz"), Foreign Affairs finds him taking on more narrative driven songwriting, as in the lengthy noir tale of "Potter’s Field" and the nostalgic road-movie recollection of "Burma-Shave." It seems fitting that this is the moment where Hollywood began to crack a door open for Waits — these songs sound like they were made for the silver screen. 

Indeed, album standout  "I Never Talk to Strangers," a duet with Bette Midler, inspired Francis Ford Coppola’s 1981 film One From the Heart. Waits wrote and performed on its  soundtrack, and would work with Coppola multiple times.

Blue Valentine (1978)

Parallels between Waits' music and his acting career crop up throughout , beginning with 1978’s Blue Valentine. Released the same year that he made his acting debut in Paradise Alley — cast as a piano player named Mumbles, an apt role to be sure — Blue Valentine opens with a big, cinematic number itself, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s "Somewhere," the famous ballad from West Side Story.

Blue Valentine also finds Waits in character development mode, increasingly populating his bluesy and bedraggled songs with widows and bounty hunters, night clerks and scarecrows wearing shades. It also features one of his most heartbreaking songs in "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis," in which Waits’ first-person epistle comes from the voice of the title character who reaches out to an old friend in a hopeful and warm update on the changes she’s made for the better. And then he seamlessly, devastatingly pulls out the rug from underneath it all, as only a fabulist like Tom Waits can. 

Heartattack and Vine (1980)

The transition from one decade to the next couldn’t have been starker for Tom Waits as he entered the 1980s. His final album for Asylum Records seemed to signal a sea change, with its leadoff track steeped in scuzzy, distorted guitar and gruff blues-rock rather than piano balladry, jazz and beat poetry.

Heartattack and Vine is in large part more of a proper rock record than any of Waits’ earlier albums, as he lends his husky growl to gritty songs such as "Downtown" and "In Shades." Still, it’s the most tender moments that comprise some of Heartattack and Vine’s most enduring songs, such as "On the Nickel" and, in particular, "Jersey Girl," covered four years later by the Garden State’s own Bruce Springsteen. 

The Avant-Garde Auteur

Tom Waits underwent a significant transformation in the 1980s, mostly leaving behind the smoky jazz-club ballads of the ‘70s in favor of a more avant garde take on rock music, rife with an arsenal of unconventional instruments. 

Swordfishtrombones (1983)

The most dramatic shift in Tom Waits’ career came with the release of 1983’s Swordfishtrombones, his first release for Island Records and the first album of what came to be the sound most often associated with Waits. It’s rougher, rawer, more experimental and offbeat. A great deal of the credit goes to Waits’ wife, Kathleen Brennan, who introduced him to artists like Captain Beefheart and who became his creative partner, co-writing many of his best-known songs. 

Waits trades the piano and strings of his earlier material for arrangements better fit for junkyard jam sessions and New Orleans funerals. Though he’s delivered a long list of releases that have since usurped such a title, Swordfishtrombones certainly sounded like his weirdest album at the time. Very little of it sounded like a conventional pop song;it’s interwoven with spoken-word pieces both hilarious and unnerving ("Frank’s Wild Years," "Trouble’s Braids"), instrumentals ("Dave the Butcher," "Rainbirds"), boneyard bashers ("Underground," "16 Shells from a Thirty-Ought Six") and even a few tender ballads ("Johnsburg, Illinois," "Town With No Cheer"). 

Though arguably far less commercial than anything he’d released prior, Swordfishtrombones still cracked the bottom half of the album charts. It also received the attention of critics, who praised Waits’ bold new direction and unconventional stylistic choices. 

Rain Dogs (1985)

For much of the 1970s, Tom Waits took inspiration from the seamier side of Los Angeles, with occasional sentimental nods to his youth further south along Interstate 5 in San Diego. With 1985’s Rain Dogs, however, he relocated to New York City to capture an even grimier and grittier album inspired by its outcasts and outlaws. 

Recorded in what was then a rough part of Manhattan in 1984, Rain Dogs continues the stylistic experimentation of Swordfishtrombones with an unusual array of instruments for a rock album, including marimba, trombone and accordion, the latter of which opens the title track in dramatic fashion with an incredible solo.

Rain Dogs also began Waits’ long collaborative relationship with Marc Ribot, whose guitar playing helps craft the album's signature sound. Through his Cuban jazz-inspired playing on "Jockey Full of Bourbon" and the scratchy and dissonant solo on "Clap Hands." Yet the album also finds him in the company of Keith Richards, whose licks appear on the album’s most famous song, "Downtown Train," which became a hit for Rod Stewart when he covered it in 1991.

Rain Dogs features Waits’ first co-writing credit from Brennan, brought dded gravitas to the aching ballad "Hang Down Your Head." It’s one of a few moments that cuts through the carnivalesque atmosphere of the album (see the demented nursery rhyme "Cemetery Polka," the crime-scene poetry of "9th and Hennepin" and the litany of misfortunes in "Gun Street Girl"). IRain Dogs is Tom Waits perfecting his approach, completing a stylistic transformation with one of his greatest batches of songs.

Frank’s Wild Years (1987)

One of the highlights of Waits’ 1983 album Swordfishtrombones was a humorous spoken-word jazz interlude wrapped up in a David Lynch nightmare, titled "Frank’s Wild Years," in which the titular Frank settles down into a suburban lifestyle, only to set his house on fire and drive off with the flames reflecting in his rearview mirror. Those 115 seconds or so were enough for Waits and Brennan to spin the idea out into a stage play, with this album serving as its soundtrack. (Its original cast at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre included Gary Sinise and Laurie Metcalf.) 

Frank’s Wild Years likewise comprises songs performed in the play, though without the context of knowing its origins, it doesn’t so easily scan as a set of songs written for the stage. It continues the aesthetic vision that Waits pursued on his two previous Island Records albums, steeped in Weill-ian cabaret and mangled lounge-jazz renditions, like in the hammy Vegas version of "Straight to the Top." Waits continues to run wild stylistically, however, veering from junkyard blues-rock in opener "Hang On St. Christopher" to the tenderness of the lo-fi 78-style recording of closing ballad "Innocent When You Dream."

Fifteen years after its release, "Way Down in the Hole," was given a second life as the theme for the HBO drama "The Wire," each season featuring a different artist’s rendition of the song. Waits’ original scores the opening credits for season two. 

Bone Machine (1992)

The title of Tom Waits’ tenth album fairly accurately sums up the sound of the record, which finds Waits incorporating heavier use of curious forms of percussion, many of them he played himself. Opening track "Earth Died Screaming" even resembles the sound of bones clanking against each other as Waits growls his way through an apocalyptic nightmare.

It’s fitting that Bone Machine coincided with Waits’ appearance as Renfield in Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. A macabre sensibility and grotesque narratives permeate this record:Acts of violence become a form of entertainment in "In the Colosseum," and he retells an actual story of a grisly homicide in "Murder in the Red Barn." There’s levity too, like in the delusions of a fame-seeker in the rowdy "Goin’ Out West," which, along with half the songs on the album, was co-written by Brennan.  

Eerie and macabre as Bone Machine is, it earned Waits his first  GRAMMYAward, for Best Alternative Music Album in 1993. Likewise, the Ramones covered standout track "I Don’t Wanna Grow Up" three years later on their final album ¡Adios Amigos!; Waits repaid the favor in 2003 with a cover of the band’s "Return of Jackie and Judy." 

The Storyteller’s Songbook

Deeper into the ‘90s and ‘00s, Waits became more active in writing music for the theatrical stage, albeit filtered through his own peculiar lens. He also closed out the ‘90s with his longest album, helping to usher in a late-career renaissance. 

The Black Rider (1993)

The soundtrack to a theatrical production,The Black Rider closed Waits' tenure with Island Records with the soundtrack to a theatrical production. Though his music appeared in films by the likes of Jim Jarmusch and Francis Ford Coppola, and he entered the world of theater with Frank’s Wild Years, this was his released  composed in collaboration with playwright Robert Wilson — they would work on three productions together — based on German folktale Der Freischütz. In fact, Waits affects his best German accent in the title track, in which he beckons, "Come on along with ze black rider, we’ll have a gay old time!"

Highlights "Flash Pan Hunter," "November" and "Just the Right Bullets" juxtapose distorted barks against ramshackle arrangements of plucked banjo, clarinet and singing saw. , The structure of the album — rife with interludes, instrumentals and reprises — sets it apart from any of his prior works, leaving room for the listener to fill in the visual blanks. 

Mule Variations (1999)

The release of Mule Variations coincided with the launch of Anti- Records, an offshoot of L.A. punk label Epitaph that was more focused on legacy artists in a variety of genres. This also resulted in the unlikely instance of a song by Tom Waits appearing on one of Epitaph’s famed Punk-O-Rama compilations, which typically featured selections by the likes of skatepunk icons NOFX and Pennywise. 

The longest studio album in Waits’ catalog, Mule Variations makes good on a six-year gap by being stacked with an eclectic selection of songs, most of them co-written with Brennan (who also co-produced the album). From the lo-fi beatbox bark that blows open the doors of leadoff track "Big In Japan," Waits essentially takes a tour through a disparate but cohesive set of songs that feels like a career summary, from tent-revival blues ("Eyeball Kid"), to devastating balladry ("Georgia Lee") and rapturous gospel ("Come On Up to the House"). 

A new generation of TikTok users received an introduction to this album via a meme featuring the album’s "What’s He Building In There?", an eerie spoken-word track from the perspective of a paranoid, busybody neighbor that became an unlikely viral sensation. 

Blood Money & Alice (2002)

 Another collaboration with playwright/director Robert Wilson, Blood Money and Alice were released on the same day in 2002. Co-written by Brennan, both are the soundtracks to  two plays, the former based on an unfinished Georg Büchner play Woyzeck and the latter an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland

Blood Money is darker and harsher in tone, kicking off with the satirically pessimistic "Misery is the River of the World," and featuring highlights such as the obituary mambo of "Everything Goes to Hell" and the charmingly tender "All the World Is Green."

Alice — whose songs had been circulated for years in bootlegs in rougher form — is more subdued and strange, its gorgeously lush and haunting opening ballad an opening into a head-spinning world of Lewis Carroll surrealism and disorientation. "Kommienezuspadt" soundtracks White Rabbit hijinks through German narration and Raymond Scott machinations, "We’re All Mad Here" lends a slightly darker shadow to an uneasy tea party, and "Poor Edward" diverts slightly from Carroll canon to visit the story of Edward Mordrake, a man born with a face on the back of his head. 

The Catalog Continues…

Though Waits hasn’t been quite as prolific in the past two decades as he had been from the ‘70s through the late ‘90s, he continued to refine and evolve his strange and uncanny sound, while sharing a triple-album’s worth of rare material that offered a wide view of his evolution over the prior two decades.

Real Gone (2004)

Waits maintained his prolific streak with the lengthy Real Gone, which featured 16 songs and spans nearly 70 minutes — just a hair shorter than his longest, Mule Variations. It’s also the rare Tom Waits album to feature no piano or organ, its melodies primarily provided via noisier guitar from Harry Cody, Larry Taylor and longtime collaborator Marc Ribot, along with contributions from Primus bassist Les Claypool and Waits’ own son, Casey, who provides percussion and turntable scratches. 

Real Gone is, at its wildest, the most abrasive record in Waits’ catalog, clanging and clapping and clattering through uproarious standouts such as the supernatural mambo of "Hoist That Rag," the CB-radio squawk of "Shake It" and creepy-crawly stomp "Don’t Go Into That Barn," one of his better scary stories to tell in the dark. He leaves a little room to ease back on dirges like the haunting "How’s It Gonna End" and the subtly gorgeous "Green Grass," but every corner of the album is populated by outsized characters and ominous visions that seem larger than ever.

Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards (2006)

A career as long and fruitful as that of Tom Waits is bound to leave some material on the cutting room floor, the likes of which is compiled on the triple-disc set Orphans. Composed of non-album material that stretches all the way back to the 1980s, it’s divided into three distinctive themes: Brawlers, a disc of rowdier rock ‘n’ roll and blues material; Bawlers, a set of ballads; and Bastards, made up of what doesn’t fit into the other two categories — essentially Waits’ most fringe, peculiar music. 

In drawing the focus toward each distinctive type of songs, Waits lets listeners experience more intensive, discrete aspects of his music. It’s the "Bastards," however, that tap into the extremes of Waits’ unique talents, comprising strange and macabre storytelling, unintelligible barks, even a wildly distinctive take on "Heigh Ho," from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Some of these songs had previously been released in some fashion — many of them appearing on movie soundtracks as well as collaborative efforts like Sparklehorse’s "Dog Door" — Orphans  speaks to how productive he’s been over the past 40 years. 

Bad As Me (2011)

Tom Waits’ final album (so far) hit shelves 12 years ago, the aftermath of which opened up his longest stretch without any new music since he began releasing records. Yet Bad As Me only offers the suggestion that Waits still has plenty of energy and inspiration left in the tank, as the album — released when he was 61 years old — comprises some of the hardest rocking material he’s ever committed to tape. It’s an album heavy on rowdy rock ‘n’ roll guitar, including that of Keith Richards, who had also previously lent his guitar playing to 1985’s Rain Dogs, as well as longtime collaborator Marc Ribot and Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo. Waits mostly adheres to concise, charged-up barnburners such as "Let’s Get Lost," "Chicago" and the more politically charged anti-war song "Hell Broke Luce." Though when Waits does ease off the throttle on songs like the eerie "Talking at the Same Time," the results are often spectacular. 

If Tom Waits were to simply leave this as the end of his recorded legacy, it’d be a satisfying closing statement, though the closing ballad "New Year’s Eve" — ending on a brief round of "Auld Lang Syne" — would suggest new beginnings ahead of him. As it turns out, Bad As Me isn’t intended to be his last; earlier this year he confirmed that, for the first time in over a decade, he’s been working on writing new songs. 

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