This here’s another of those songs with the backstory like those that I’ve written about in the past where I was properly getting into the practice of actively listening through albums from front to back and finding what was considered to be the best ones via this website called Best Ever Albums.com This was in, I’d say 2012/2013. There’s an actual “Best Ever Album” list on there. Tom Waits’s Rain Dogs was quite deep in, maybe in the 100s or something at the time, and before I found it I’d no clue that a Tom Waits existed or that he was making albums. So my first listen through Rain Dogs was very much a blind one.

‘Singapore’ is the first track on the album. To say it’s not the usual standard rock number is an understatement. Instead of the usual guitar, bass guitar and drums outfit, this was a song with a double bass, trombone, I’ll assume a wooden xylophone, and a guitar playing the most dissonant of lines. And then came in Waits’s vocal, a hushed delivery that varied from a spiky, biting tone to a deeper one that resembled the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. With all that being said, I think I was instantly hooked once its “oompah” rhythm properly got underway. All of the elements together make for a very, very fun listen. The song reminds me of one of those types you’d hear those old ’30s-ish spooky cartoons where skeletons come out of their graves and start dancing around to the beat of whatever’s playing at the time. If only I had a specific example, but I think you may know what I mean.

Wikipedia labels Rain Dogs as “a loose concept album about ‘the urban dispossessed’ of New York City”, and it’s my view that ‘Singapore’ is the track that ‘welcomes’ the listener into this setting, introducing us to the unusual characters that dwell within. Waits and these strange people are heading off to Singapore, and he goes about listing the things can and can’t do on the journey as well as the things he’s done on his past travels. I stumbled upon a comment that said it was like ‘gothic vaudeville’, which I never could that thought of but is incredibly apt. And there’s more that where it came from as Rain Dogs goes on. Had things been different, there would have been posts for ‘Clap Hands‘ and ‘Cemetery Polka’ on here too. As it stands though, this’ll be the only Tom Waits entry that’ll ever be on here. Solid representative though.