The one word that gave Bruce Springsteen his only number one hit: “It worked y’know”
Regret is an essential part of life, which means it’s a necessary part of songwriting, too. Every lyricist has a line they wish they hadn’t written, a verse that makes them cringe to look back on or a chorus that, on reflection, just didn’t quite do the job. Maybe they chose a clichéd phrase that hasn’t quite stood the test of time, or perhaps their lyrical style has evolved so much that they can’t stand to hear their rougher, earlier drafts. But for Bruce Springsteen, it’s a different story.
Springsteen is one of the most accomplished songwriters of his generation, a voice for the everyman, but that hasn’t stopped him from making the occasional lyrical blunder. “But my love is bigger than a Honda,” he sings on ‘Pink Cadillac’. “Yeah, it’s bigger than a Subaru.” Not exactly his most refined metaphor. “Well, you can beat on your chest, hell, any monkey can, but you got me feeling like a real man,” he sings on ‘Real Man’.
But one of the lyric choices Springsteen seems to look back on and cringe at most wasn’t actually his own doing. In early 1973, following the release of his debut record, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., Springsteen released a track called ‘Blinded by the Light’. The song performed well with audiences, but it wasn’t until Manfred Mann tok on the song a couple of years later that it won Springsteen his only number one.
Manfred Mann and his Earth Band covered the track in 1976, topping the charts in the process, a feat that Springsteen was grateful for. “This song is my only number one song,” the songwriter explained on VH1’s Storytellers, “I’ve never had another number one song. Except this one wasn’t done by me, it was done by Manfred Mann, which I appreciate.”
However, there was one part of Mann’s cover that Springsteen didn’t appreciate. In the original chorus, Springsteen sang, “And she was blinded by the light, oh, cut loose like a deuce, another runner in the night,” which the songwriter acknowledged was a nod to “Little Deuce Coupe, as in a two-seater hot rod.” However, Mann completely changed the meaning of the line with just one word.
Instead of singing “deuce”, Mann’s version changed the word to “douche”, which Springsteen joked was the reason for the track’s success. “I have a feeling that is why the song skyrocketed to number one,” he commented sarcastically, eliciting laughs from his audience, “It worked y’know.”
“They are different,” Springsteen shrugged, “But what can I say? The public spoke, and they were right y’know.” The songwriter’s comments seemed to be in jest, but that didn’t stop Manfred Mann from worrying that he had upset The Boss with his misheard lyrics. “I don’t think Springsteen liked our ‘Blinded by the Light’,” he shared with Record Collector, “‘cos we sang ‘wrapped up like a douche,’ and it wasn’t written like that and I screwed it up completely.”
The line change may have stung Springsteen a little, but Mann’s concerns seem mostly unfounded. It must have been uncomfortable for the songwriter to watch his track top the charts with a cringeworthy line that he hadn’t even penned, but his comments about the incident have all seemed light-hearted and sarcastic. Plus, Mann had given him his only number one.
