To carry the original analogy into music, Frank Sinatra is a stylist, while Tom Waits is a designer.

Sinatra was a marvellous stylist. He was able to take virutally any song and make it sound like his. But he never wrote the lyrics, and he never wrote the music. Creatively Sinatra was barren, all he did was put his signature on other people’s work. He didn’t make anything new. But he did make songs sound way cooler then they ever had before.

Waits on the other hand is every bit as cool and distinctive a vocal stylist as Sinatra, soaking each song he touches in sweaty hot bourbon. But Waits also writes the lyrics, the music, and the identites that sit somewhere in front of the songwiter but behind the voice in the song.

Ok, I’ll try to stop harping about this (…for a while).