Which, anyone who knows me will expect, brings us to “Downtown train”, but I'm not using the Waits version, as I have other plans for him. Instead, the man who popularised and had a hit with the Tom Waits song, and is now so identified with it that many people think he wrote it.
Title: “Downtown train”
Format: Single
Written by: Tom Waits
Performed by: Rod Stewart
Genre: Rock
Taken from: Vagabond Heart
Year: 1991
Acclaim: Reached no. 3 in the charts; seen as one of Stewart's biggest songs from the nineties and even almost a signature tune now for him. "Tom who?" people ask...
As I say above, and as most of you will probably know, this is a song originally written by Tom Waits and released from his 1985 opus
Rain Dogs as a single, where it did ... precisely nothing. Fast forward five years and our man Rod is releasing a cover version that gets him very close to the number one spot, but does at least rekindle some interest in Waits' work, so it can't be that bad.
Things I like about this :
Everything, particularly the way Stewart stays relatively faithful to the original, without being a carbon copy of it. A very good cover.
Things I don't like about this:
Nothing.
Rating: 