Bruce Springsteen once picked “the best love song” he ever wrote: “A kiss-off to everybody”
Nowhere near enough credit has ever been given to how wildly peculiar Bruce Springsteen is as a musician. His place in culture is an oddity. Many of his best-loved songs are entirely misunderstood; he’s called ‘The Boss’ despite hating the nickname and what it stands for, and his image is dubbed ‘all-American’ despite being one of the more critical contemporary voices of his homeland.
There are many reasons why this might be the case, but one of them is how hard his back catalogue is to cajole into something uniform. Alongside stadium anthems, there are just as many dogeared ditties that have a distinctly humble aura. In fact, this was largely his sound before he finally got signed up despite the naysayers saying he lacked bite, and he carried his folk ways into his first two records, penning a song to hit back at those critics.
“I wrote it as a kiss-off to everybody who counted you out, put you down, or decided you weren’t good enough,” Springsteen wrote of ‘Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)’ in his memoir. And while he toured his second album, The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, he would call the track “the greatest love song I ever wrote,” a tradition he has still occasionally kept up.
The song shows defiance on two fronts; firstly, it was a middle finger to his critics in the music industry, but it also documents an autobiographical tale from back when he was 17 of how his girlfriend’s mother didn’t approve of him, even going so far as to call the police on him, so that he had conducted his rendezvous in sworn secrecy. As he croons, “Mama, she’s home in the window, waitin’ up for us”.
The song proved to be a pivotal one for Springsteen. “The record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance,” he sings in recognition of the moment that he shrugged those questioning his life choices off his back after Columbia Records handed him a check for $25,000. But beyond that, the success of the rather raucous single signified that he wasn’t just a flash in the pan and was able to turn out further singles.
Springsteen clearly holds this track in high esteem. It’s an effervescent number, too, positively bristling with intent and demanding attention the only way Springsteen knew how. This song is all about young love and the excitement it brings, making this easily our favourite moment on the album.
It’s a track that sets the scene for the escapism of the forthcoming album Born To Run, as the world dreamed of setting sail across the oceans and heading on the road to nowhere with the one you loved. The excitement of the proceedings neatly juxtaposes its innocence. It’s a pure joy.
This particular track also marks a transition in his music as he adds a rocking muscularity to the tender realm of love songs. It typifies both his core folk tenets and his ability to coax out a euphoric first pump without one jeopardising the integrity of the other. As such, it has become a staple of Springsteen’s live set.
In fact, he has played it live 868 times, making it his ninth most played song live, with ‘Born to Run‘ way out ahead on 1814 plays.
