"Annie's Back in Town"

'Paradise Alley' soundtrack, 1978

Every Tom Waits Song is an email newsletter covering just that, in alphabetical order. Find more info here and sign up to get it sent straight to your inbox:

The first ‘70s song we come across in our journey is an odd one. "Annie's Back in Town" sounds like near-peak piano crooner Waits, something that would slot right in on Small Change or Blue Valentines. Hell, it would have been the best thing on Foreign Affairs. Instead, it appeared on the soundtrack to a universally-panned Sylvester Stallone movie.

Waits and Stallone became friends in the '70s, and Stallone, fresh off the success of Rocky, cast Waits in his first movie role, as the saloon piano player Mumbles (hardly a stretch) in the movie Paradise Alley. “I went and sat in front of a piano for three weeks and then I went home," Tom said later of his "acting" in the film.

Here's Tom performing with Stallone in the movie, and performing a few bars of "Annie's Back in Town":

Tom also contributed to the soundtrack, recording five songs, only two of which made the final album: this and the almost-titular “(Meet Me In) Paradise Alley," which we'll get to in the “M” section (or should that be “P”?). Though presumably written to order for the movie - one of the main characters is named Annie, though having not seen the movie I can’t verify whether she is or isn’t back in town - "Annie's Back in Town" sounds like it should a classic '70s Waits song, not a soundtrack obscurity.

He must have thought so too, performing it regularly in concert for several years - more often than he performed some songs on his actual albums. Here's one such rendition, from Austin City Limits in 1978:

Up next: Tom is afraid of percussion