The two singers Tom Waits said were out of everybody’s league: “I go crazy”
When it comes to inimitable vocal styles, there aren’t too many singers who have a more unique sound than Tom Waits.
When he first emerged in the mid-1970s, albums like Closing Time pinned the singer down as a blues and jazz-focused act, and while much of this style of music would go on to continue influencing his output later on in his career, things would eventually take a significant turn when his albums became more ambitious in scope.
As things went on, his records became increasingly experimental and strange in their presentation, with albums like Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs showcasing his pivot towards being a little more avant-garde, and where he truly harnessed the croakiness of his already peculiar vocal delivery.
Naturally, with time, his voice got even more hoarse than it already was, owing both to the ageing process and a strict diet of cigarettes and whisky that he’d followed for decades, and his later releases are characterised by this bluesy baritone rasp that he’d acquired over the years.
Waits’ voice was less an instrument or even a texture by this late point of his career, but more being utilised like a weapon; if you couldn’t bring yourself to become acclimatised to his style, then it would quickly turn you away and make you never want to come close to it again. That being said, those who were on board with this style were able to see him as a truly magnificent performer and someone with a style that simply couldn’t be copied.
However, that doesn’t mean that he can’t admire others for how they’ve managed to also forge something totally unique for themselves, and over the years, there have been numerous other vocalists that Waits has highlighted an appreciation for, praising their talents on numerous occasions.
During a 2005 interview with The Guardian, Waits named The Rolling Stones’ ‘I Just Want To See His Face’ as one of his favourite songs of all time, and used the opportunity to praise Mick Jagger’s vocals on the track. “That song had a big impact on me,” he claimed, “particularly learning how to sing in that high falsetto, the way Jagger does. When he sings like a girl, I go crazy. I said, ‘I’ve got to learn how to do that.’ I couldn’t really do it until I stopped smoking. That’s when it started getting easier to do. Nobody does it like Mick Jagger; nobody does it like Prince.”
While he didn’t speak any further on Prince during this interview, Waits still also believed that his performing abilities were second to none, and claimed that despite trying to emulate him on his Bone Machine track, ‘Dirt In The Ground’, he still couldn’t come close to his style. “I tried to sing in my high, my Prince voice,” he joked. “I can only do that once or twice, and then it’s gone. If I try to sing like that on the road every night, forget about it.”
Both of these artists are the sort that require little to be said to qualify their brilliance, and while Waits is seen as being stylistically disparate from both of these vocal icons, you can understand why he’s always been so enamoured with two artists who did things their way and succeeded, just as he has done for the majority of his career.
