5 Great Songwriters Who Defined A Generation

3. Tom Waits

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZhW76LAnTY As a connoisseur of the rough side to American life, Tom Waits always paints a vivid landscape of all that he has seen and heard. After thirty-nine years in the music business, his skin has crinkled and his voice is so gravelly it is astonishing that his voice-box is still intact, but his mind is as street smart as it ever was, like an old, vagrant hound that has wondered far and wide. The modern generation may only be aware of Waits because of his film cameos, for he has always been severely underrated, mainly down to the fact that he is unwilling to sacrifice his work to the trappings of commercialism. Still, his fan base courts many awestruck followers who tail his developments as if they were a pilgrimage, and they are currently desperate to see if Waits is going to venture on his first tour since 2008. He began as a folk singer of sorts, writing down-and-out love songs accompanied by the sombre tones of an acoustic guitar, before he veered down a colourful path soaked with the blues, sensual jazz cadences, and a whole lot of whiskey and cigarettes to boot. Waits€™ literary hero is the late, great laureate, Charles Bukowski, and a hefty bulk of his literary custom is a sub-species of the blue-collar, beer swilling microcosm that Bukowski hurled onto the pages of his books. For a period of nine years, starting with Small Change (1976) and ending with Rain Dogs (1985), Waits was virtually untouchable as a master of the lyric, unravelling a conveyor belt of similes, onomatopoeias and graphic imagery in his songs, feeding listeners with many a greasy, plastic spoonful of urban tales and broken hearts that would transport one€™s imagination to smack bang in the middle of the action. His latest album, Bad As Me (2011), was viewed as a return to form by cultural critics and fans, and now all that remains to be seen is whether he is willing to grace the stages and the continents once more. The news could not come soon enough! Signature track: Downtown Train (1985) Tune into...: Blue Valentines (1978)