Tom Waits – Blood Money

"Blood Money" is based on the socio-political play "Woyzeck," originally written by the young German poet Georg Buchner in 1837 as a spare, cinematic piece inspired by the true story of a German soldier driven mad by bizarre army medical experiments and infidelity, which led him to murder his lover

With his wife and collaborator Kathleen Brennan, Waits wrote songs for an avant-garde production of "Woyzeck" directed by Robert Wilson that premiered at the Betty Nansen Theater in Copenhagen in November 2000 and won the Danish version of the Tony for Best Musical. The album oscillates between brutality and tenderness, between stormy rhythms and romantic melodies

It's a dark musical treatise on the human condition, a dark mortality play where Tin Pan Alley meets the Weimar Republic. "'Blood Money' is flesh and blood, earthy," Waits says. "The songs are rooted in reality: jealousy, anger, the human wheel of flesh...They're more carnal. I like beautiful songs that tell you terrible things. We all like bad news from a beautiful mouth. I like songs that sound like they've been barrel-aged and desperate."