You can never quite pin down an artist as mercurial as Tom Waits. Even within the course of a single album, he’ll take you on such a wild ride that you won’t know what to expect from song to song.
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His 1999 album Mule Variations, one of the highlights of his career, epitomizes those qualities. Much of the album stirs up an insane clamor. But then it pulls back for several beautiful ballads, including the heartbreaking “House Where Nobody Lives”.
Playing “House”
It had been a while when Tom Waits teed up Mule Variations. His previous album, Black Rider, had appeared six years earlier. And even that wasn’t a traditional album, as Waits had written the songs for a play. You have to go back to Bone Machine in 1992 for its actual predecessor.
Needless to say, Waits was brimming with material when it came time to record again. He and his wife Kathleen Brennan, who also acts as the co-writer for much of his material, came up with around 25 songs that Waits recorded. Only 16 made the final cut for Mule Variations.
It’s clear that Waits chose the final lineup based on a desire for variety. Mule Variations wanders all over the musical spectrum. It combines the somber balladry from the early part of his career with his 80s renaissance era, where he surrounded his tales of outcasts and ne’er-do-wells with an unholy racket of twisted guitars and clanging percussion.
“House Where Nobody Lives”, which was composed solely by Waits, certainly hearkens back to his balladeer era. Playing what sounds like the first piano ever made, he croaks his way through a woeful tale of an abode that has fallen into squalor.
Examining the Lyrics of “House Where Nobody Lives” by Tom Waits
The narrator gives us the agonizing details of the “House Where Nobody Lives” throughout much of the song. Occasionally, he stops to speculate on why it has fallen into disrepair. “Once it held laughter, once it held dreams,” Waits explains, before wondering about the inhabitants, “Did they throw it away, did they know what it means.”
“Folks moved out of it a long time ago,” Waits shrugs at the house’s sad fate. “And they took all their things and they never came back.” Instead of being the Smith home or the Jones home, the narrator explains, “Everyone calls it the house, the house where nobody lives.”
Waits makes sure to highlight just how decrepit the structure has become. He mentions cracked paint, copious weeds, and newspapers littering the porch. The narrator can’t imagine it coming back to life. “Looks like no one will ever come back,” he surmises. “To the house where nobody lives.”
In the final verse, the narrator turns to the audience to give them some advice. “I have all of life’s treasures,” he explains. “And they’re fine and they’re good/They remind me that houses/Are just made of wood.” Tom gets all sentimental on us at the end. “If there’s love in a house,” he claims. “It’s a palace for sure.”
His final lines suggest that even a house that appears well-kept can be barren: “But without love/It ain’t nothin’ but a house/A house where nobody lives.” Tom Waits showed with “House Where Nobody Lives” that he could still deliver the slow stuff like no one else, even amidst all the bang and clatter of his other work.
Photo by Hill/WireImage via Getty Images
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