The one lyric Bruce Springsteen said was out of his league
In a world full of pompous rock stars, most could take a few hints from Bruce Springsteen now and again.
Despite never having to work a day in his life, ‘The Boss’ has always seen his job as being one of the greatest missionaries of rock and roll every single time he gets up onstage to play his tunes. For a brief few hours, every single stadium he has played becomes a rock and roll church in a way, but even a miracle worker like Springsteen sometimes needed help when making some of those classic tunes.
Then again, Springsteen would say that he would be nowhere without any member of the E Street Band, not being with him every single step of the way. The sense of community that he created with every member of the band makes them feel like one big rock and roll family whenever they play, and no matter how hard they try to feed off each other, the result is some of the most natural human performances that anyone has created, whether that’s Springsteen and Patti Scialfa singing together or Clarence Clemons’s immortal saxophone lines on his greatest tunes.
All of them provided a different piece of the puzzle, but Springsteen was the one writing the stories behind them. He knew about the ins and outs of what went on in New Jersey on the weekends, and while he eventually made it out of there when Born to Run exploded, he never stopped thinking about the little guy. After all, rock and roll is based around underdogs, and he knew that the only way that kind of victory feels good is to know how easy it was to fall.
While not all of his records are necessarily the most optimistic look at the world, he did understand what made people keep going whenever they got knocked down. Even for an album that was as stark and blunt as Nebraska, having it end with a song like ‘Reason to Believe’ was the best coda that he could have given for people looking at the bleakness of the world and wanting to throw in the towel.
Because at the end of the day, there’s a lot of romance in what Springsteen does, and not necessarily when talking about strictly love, either. His faith was in believing that there was something better on the other side of the tracks, and while he could do okay when singing those kinds of songs, ‘Because the Night’ was never going to work had Patti Smith not given it the lyrics it was always meant to have.
The instrumentation is quintessential heartland rock, but ‘The Boss’ knew that song wasn’t his anymore the minute that Smith added her touch to it, saying, “I had a nice hook and a song that I couldn’t finish the lyrics for so Patti took it and turned it into the hit it became, writing a beautiful love song. It wouldn’t have been a hit if I had released it. It needed a woman’s voice. She turned it into something that I alone could have never created. And for that I will forever thank my lovely, lovely friend.”
And while Smith’s voice isn’t exactly the most trained instrument in the world, hearing her stepping outside of her comfort zone for this song is absolutely perfect. There’s a certain nervous energy to the way that she sings, but listening to her story about finding love suits her vocal tone perfectly. Because when you think about it, love can be scary when it starts, but knowing that she would go on to have a beautiful family with Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith was the happy ending that Springsteen might not have even have known was possible.
He may have eventually found his own happiness when marrying one of the best singers the E Street Band ever had, but Smith has one thing that no one can fake in this industry: hope. The pop world may grow accustomed to people trying their hardest to bat down someone’s hopes and dreams, but whenever Smith sings this song or any other, she always seems to feel like the best days of her life are right around the corner.
