Typically, I am not one for celebrity drivel, but Scarlett Johannsen is recording an album of Tom Waits covers! Pitchfork says. I don’t really even know who that is, but I’m sure that this shall cause lots of young’uns to flock to the release because she’s pretty and people are shallow. Anyhow, this opens up the songs of Tom Waits to an entirely new audience of younger and more impressionable folks who would ordinarily either not encounter or not embrace Tom Waits! Tom Waits for everyone! Yay!
This then comes to the idea that Tom Waits is in this way being watered down and sugar coated, which makes said starlet a huge jerk, on the flip side.
One time when I was studying drama in Ontario, my professor played for us examples of “throat singing” so as to demonstrate how our bodies were capable of things we never imagined or something. I was astute enough to point out that Tom Waits fell into this category and that he should play a whole lot of it immediately, while my classmates writhed in agony at these alarmingly low octaves. Then the professor laughed and shook his head and said, “You just don’t strike me the sort of person that would be a Tom Waits fan”, which is quite ambiguous and probably offensive in nature. Regardless, the days of such judgments are coming to an end because Scarlett Johannsen is going to make Tom Waits socially acceptable to all, and that will be that. Just remember that I was enamored with him before this whole fiasco. You posers.
I wonder which ten songs the lass is going to end up covering? If it were I, the track listing would be as follows:
1. Time
2. So It Goes
3. Hold On
4. I Don’t Wanna Grow Up
5. I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You
6. Pony
7. Earth Died Screaming
8. Walking Spanish
9. Come On Up To The House
10. Alice
Now you know. If someone ever holds a gun to your head and demands you recite which ten Tom Waits songs Ashley Rattner would choose to cover if she were a famous actress, you will have been adequately prepared.
In short, my English professor ranted on the sorry state of society for a long three hours tonight and those raspy blues as only Tom Waits can sing ‘em that filled my little grey car on the long drive home.
