Tom Waits - Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)

Tom Waits - Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen), Small Change (1976)

This song always leaves me at a loss for words, simply because there are none strong enough to describe it.

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[63mathilda]

I appreciate your comment. Maybe nowadays "waltzing Mathilda" means what you say, but I don't think that Banjo Patterson had that in mind when he wrote the original song. I was explained by Australians that it means that the swagmen danced with the rolled-up sleeping bag when they were sitting around the fire at nights. So for me, "waltzing Mathilda" is rather an expression for extreme loneliness and longing for holding somebody. This explanation would also make sense in this song. Agree?

[BirthTrashDeath]

One of the Songs that go so close to Life, that it hurts.

[Beyond Dictation]

Well the official Australian slang term is that a swagman would waltz with his swag which basically means walk with, and the original was about the loneliness of being a traveller in the fresh countryside of new settled of Australia so your take is pretty close if not on the dot :)

[Raap123]

I gonna use it on my funeral.

[kei wak]

I don't know how trantrate to English.

Just say "shi-bu-i" .

Thank you for coming up.

[andrew69music]

this song makes me cry... Beautiful song.

[alpauk]

ну какой охуенный чувак, а?

[Ken Ginn]

This song is about a woman, a violinist, that I believe he had an affair with in Copenhagen, and the inevitable end to the affair. Her name was Mathilde Bondo

[Swordfishstick]

I discovered Waits in my early 20's, nearly two decades ago - listening to these wonderful songs now brings me back to the time I was first discovering them. Somehow they've spoken to me and touched me deeper than any other music.

I listen to a wide variety of music, but listening to Waits always feels like coming home.