Exactly what genre does Waits belong to? With a lot of artists you can definitively say that they either make 'rock' music, 'pop' music, 'country' music, hip-hop and so forth. We recognise the conventions and are thus able to clearly identify the type of music that we're listening to. Waits' back catalogue, on the other hand, is not so easy to categorise. Each album has a different, unique sound to it. His earlier albums, Closing Time and The Heart of Saturday Night, were jazzier, folkier efforts. Things got a little more bluesy with Small Change, Foreign Affairs and Blue Valentine, although elements of jazz and folk were still present. The 1980s and Heartattack and Vine saw Waits' sound become rockier. The experimentation continued throughout that decade and beyond. Oftentimes, Tom Waits' sound was as close to industrial music as anything else. On any given Tom Waits album you can expect to hear elements of rock, blues, experimental rock, blues rock, country rock, folk and so forth. His ability to genre-hop is quite astounding and means that you never know what to expect from the next Tom Waits album. Speaking of which, when is the new album coming out, Tom? Come on, it's been four years since Bad As Me!
