Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis

Tom Waits constructs one of songwriting's most heartbreaking narrative misdirections. Over a smoky saloon piano, the narrator paints a cosy domestic picture of a sober husband who plays the trombone and buys her clothes, only for the final stanza to dismantle the illusion: she is writing from a county jail cell, desperately needing to borrow money. The listener is left wondering which parts of her loneliness are fact and which are protective myth.