Top/ Foreign Affairs is an album by Tom Waits, released in 1977 on Elektra Entertainment. It was produced by Bones Howe, and features Bette Midler singing a duet with Waits on "I Never Talk to Strangers". Tom Waits (born 7 December 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car." With this trademark growl, his incorporation of pre-rock styles such as blues, jazz, and vaudeville, and experimental tendencies verging on industrial music, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona. He has worked as a composer for movies and musical plays and as a supporting actor in films, including The Fisher King, Coffee & Cigarettes and Down by Law (both directed by Jim Jarmusch), Bram Stoker's Dracula, Wristcutters: A Love Story, and the 1993 Robert Altman film Short Cuts. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his soundtrack work on One from the Heart, a 1982 musical film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Lyrically, Waits' songs contain atmospheric portrayals of bizarre, seedy characters and places, although he has also shown a penchant for more conventional ballads. Bottom/ Asylum Years (1986) is the second "best of" compilation covering Tom Waits' Asylum Records years. The album curiously features no tracks from 1975 fan favourite Nighthawks at the Diner but has poignant and touching songs such as his magnificent version of Somewhere (from West Side Story), "Kentucky Avenue" and the classic "Ruby’s Arms".
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