Parade Magazine
1973 Song With Zero Chart History, Written by a 24-Year-Old, Is Still a Heartbreaking Ballad 53 Years Later
By Andrea Reiher
August 3, 2026
Released on Tom Waits’ 1973 debut album Closing Time, the song was never issued as a single. It has zero Billboard chart history.
Yet more than five decades later, Martha fans still treasure it. It introduced listeners to the storytelling style that would define his great career.
Rather than focusing on a breakup itself, Waits imagines something far more poignant: a man placing a long-distance phone call to a woman he loved decades earlier.
“Operator, number please / It’s been so many years,” he begins before asking, “Will she remember my old voice while I fight the tears?”
The caller, Tom Frost, eventually reaches Martha and suggests they meet for coffee to reminisce about “those were days of roses, of poetry and prose.” Even though both have long since married other people, he closes with a heartbreaking confession: “Martha, Martha, I love you, can’t you see?”
Part of what makes Martha so extraordinary is that Waits was only 24 years old when he wrote it, yet he convincingly inhabited the perspective of a man looking back on a lost love after four decades.
In a retrospective appreciation of the song, The Guardian noted that Waits “drops comfortably into the slippers of a much, much older man,” creating a narrator who calls an old flame to reflect on their shared past before quietly revealing that he is still in love with her. The publication also argued that the mystery surrounding why the couple drifted apart only deepens the song’s emotional impact, leaving listeners to imagine what might have been.
Although Closing Time attracted positive reviews, it received little commercial attention when it was released, and neither the album nor “Martha” became chart hits in the United States. Over time, however, the record developed a devoted following and introduced songs that would become staples of Waits’ catalog.
“Martha” also found new life through other artists. Tim Buckley recorded the first notable cover later in 1973, while Bette Midler later performed the song on Saturday Night Live.
More than 50 years after its release, “Martha” continues to resonate because its central idea is universal. Most people have wondered, at least once, what became of someone they loved years ago. Waits turned that fleeting thought into a four-and-a-half-minute conversation that still feels as intimate and heartbreaking today as it did in 1973.
