Composition
Closing Time features an eclectic mix of musical styles. Songs such as "Ol '55", with its "gentle slipnote piano chords", and "Old Shoes", "a country-rock waltz that picked up the feel of 'Ol' 55'", are usually considered folk-like. Other songs such as "Virginia Avenue", "Midnight Lullaby", whose outro features an instrumental segment of the nursery rhyme "Hush Little Baby", and "Grapefruit Moon" reveal a quieter, more jazz-like temperament. "Ice Cream Man" is often noted as being the most "up-tempo" song of the album, whereas "Lonely" is toned-down and slow-paced. The sophisticated piano melodies are often accompanied by trumpets, typical of the jazz sound that Waits originally designated for the album. Noticeable string arrangements are also featured on the album, on "Martha" and the final song "Closing Time", the latter being purely instrumental.
The songs on Closing Time are often noted for their lyrical content and vary in form. "Ol' '55" narrates the story of a man riding "lickety splitly" in a car and is often seen as a song about escapism, "like his near-contemporary Bruce Springsteen." This theme is also present in "Old Shoes" which narrates another story about "a footloose young stud hitting the road and semi-sneering", particularly in lyrics such as "your tears cannot bind me anymore" and "my heart was not born to be tamed." Other lyrics on the album are described as melancholic, particularly "Lonely", "I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love with You" and "Grapefruit Moon", which are "both self-conscious and lacklustre." The intro to "Midnight Lullaby" borrows lyrics from the English nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence". This form of song-writing became a lifelong habit of Waits following the writing of "Midnight Lullaby", in which he "assembled lyrics from fragments of oral tradition."
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