Surely I Can't Be the Only One Who Thinks Tom Waits and Lana Del Rey Are Bound by a Spectral Energy

A musical case study...

I have two top artists on Spotify at any given moment: Lana Del Rey and Tom Waits. I first got into Lana in high school, living in the long (and dramatic), cinematic tumblr-tinged aftermath of Born to Die. As for Tom, I didn’t really have a choice as both my parents were fans. I grew up listening to Mule Variations, absorbing his voice like you would secondhand smoke. He’s really stuck with me!

Side note: anyone trying to clear a bar to make room for your pals, just queue up “Filipino Box Spring Hog" on the jukebox a coupla times. A real crowd favorite, that one.

Anyways, after many collective listening hours, likely days (…months?), I’ve become convinced that these two artists share an unspoken kinship. After spiraling down this rabbit hole, I’ve unloaded this theory onto countless friends. I’ve tried explaining this feeling that their music taps into the same undercurrent, the same haunted and poetic ~ache~. I usually struggle to elaborate in the moment.

But I swear, there is something ethereal there! It’s like they tap into the same dark, poetic vision of the world, through nostalgic, melancholic, Americana prose. There’s some real spectral energy binding them together if your ask me!

They both convey an ache for what’s past or unattainable, finding poetry in imperfections and exploring memory and what it means to hold onto something that’s slipping away.

They each romanticize a fading myth of America in their own cinematic style, capturing different sides of the same myth. They exist in parallel, different corners of the same dying empire.

I created this playlist as a kind of musical thesis, because without hearing it, this comparison doesn’t fully land. With that said, there’s a very high probability that I’ve listened to these two so much that I’m making connections that aren’t there. But I don’t think so. Regardless, I’m curious what you think!