My 30 Favorite Tom Waits Songs

June 3, 2008

I had no idea how difficult this was going to be. A talent like this deserves at least a Top 100 Songs. This will have to do…

1.World Keeps Turning
“Put a hat on your head. Will you paint the whole damn town red with me?”
2.Alice
“And the tears on my face. And the skates on the pond. They spell Alice.”
3.Day After Tomorrow
“Tell me, who does God choose? Whose prayers does he refuse?”
4.I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You
“Well the room is crowded, people everywhere. And I wonder, should I offer you a chair?”
5.Gun Street Girl
“With her fireman’s raincoat and her long yellow hair, well they tied her to a tree with a skinny millionaire.”
6.The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)
“And the newspapers were fooling, and the ash trays have retired, ’cause the piano has been drinking.”
7.Take It With Me
“It’s got to be more than flesh and bone. All that you’re loved is all you own.”
8.Ol’ 55
“And it’s six in the morning; gave me no warning. I had to be on my way.”
9.All the World is Green
“Maybe when our story’s over we’ll go where it’s always spring.”
10.Bottom of the World
“…razorweed onion and peacock squirrel. And I dreamed all night about a beautiful girl.”
11.Come On Up to the House
“And your singing lead soprano in a junkman’s choir. You gotta come on up to the house.”
12.Jockey Full of Bourbon
“2 pairs of pants and a mother vest. I’m full of bourbon, I can’t stand up.”
13.Hoist That Rag
“The sun is up the world is flat. Damn good address for a rat.”
14.Widow’s Grove
“And with your last breath, you moaned too drunk to wake.”
15.Hold On
“Everyone is looking for someone to blame. But you share my bed, you share my name.”
16.Rains On Me
“Forty monkeys drowning in a boiling sea. Everywhere I go it rains on me.”
17.Hang Down Your Head
“Tear the promise from my heart, tear my heart today.”
18.Picture In A Frame
“I’m gonna love you till the wheels come off. Oh yea.”
19.If I Have To Go
“Tell all the others, you’ll hold in your arms, that I said I’d come back for you.”
20.Misery is the River of the World
“If there’s one thing you can say about ManKind, there’s nothing kind about man.”
21.Poor Edward
“He took a suite of rooms and hung himself and her from the balcony irons.”
22.Pony
“I lived on nothin’ but dreams and train smoke. Somehow my watch and chain got lost.”
23.(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night
“Is it the barmaid that’s smilin’ from the corner of her eye? Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.”
24.Clap Hands
“Moon in the window, a bird on the pole. Can always find a millionaire to shovel all the coal.”
25.Fannin Street
“Give a man gin, give a man cards, give an inch he takes a yard.”
26.Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards)
“Honey, my heart was not born to be tamed.”
27.Trampled Rose
“I know that rose, like I know my name.”
28.Georgia Lee
“…somewhere a baby is crying for her mom as the hills turn from green back to gold.”
29.Road To Peace
“They fill the children full of hate to fight an oil man’s war and die upon the road to peace.”
30.Lonely
“And I thought that I knew all there was to. Lonely, lonely, lonely eyes….”