“Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis” by Tom Waits

Tom Waits tucked "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis" onto Blue Valentine, his 1978 album for Asylum, and it's about as bleak a holiday greeting as anyone ever mailed. He wrote it alone and sings it, playing piano next to George Duke on electric piano, with Bones Howe producing and engineering.

The whole song is her letter: a prostitute writing to a man called Charlie. She tells him she's pregnant, off booze and drugs, settled with a new husband who'll raise the baby as his own, and she dreams over the better choices she'd make with the cash they used to pour into dope. Then she comes clean: there is no husband, and she's inside, hoping for parole by Valentine's Day. It's been called a laconic first-person sketch, and the punchline lands like a cell door.

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