Produced and arranged by former Lovin' Spoonful member Jerry Yester, Closing Time was the first of seven of Waits' major releases by Asylum.

[5][6] The album's only single, "Ol' '55", attracted attention due to a cover version by Waits's more popular label mates, the Eagles.

Tom Waits began his musical career in 1969, performing every Monday night at The Troubadour, a venue in West Hollywood, California.

Among the songs performed were "Ice Cream Man", "Virginia Avenue", "Ol' '55", "I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love with You", "Shiver Me Timbers" and "Diamonds on my Windshield."

Around this time, Waits began working as a doorman at a San Diego, California, club, The Heritage, which was a coffee house by day.

[17] The instrumentation, recording arrangements, and musicians were also discussed during this session with Waits making it "absolutely clear he wanted a standup bass player.

"[21] During the recording of "Ol' '55", Seiter contributed backing vocals and "came up with a perfect harmony line that started faintly before the chorus even began.

The final session for Closing Time began the following Sunday, with guest musicians Arni Egilsson replacing Plummer and Jesse Erlich performing cello.

Songs such as "Ol '55", with its "gentle slipnote piano chords",[20] 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.

"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.

"[25] This theme is also present in "Old Shoes" which narrates another story about "a footloose young stud hitting the road and semi-sneering",[26] 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".

[26] 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.

In Rolling Stone, critic Stephen Holden praised it as "a remarkable debut album" and branded Waits as "a boozier, earthier version" of Randy Newman who similarly "delights in rummaging through the attics of nostalgia".

[38] Village Voice critic Robert Christgau noted that with his "jazz-schooled piano and drawling delivery ... Waits exploits an honest sentimentality which he undercuts just enough to be credible".

[45] Covers of "I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love with You" can be found on Step Right Up (by 10,000 Maniacs), The Prince and Me soundtrack (by Marc Cohn), Hootie & the Blowfish's Scattered, Smothered and Covered compilation, 10,000 Maniacs' Campfire Songs compilation, and "Heart and Soul," an episode of Ally McBeal, where it is sung by Jon Bon Jovi.