“I wish I’d wrote that”: the Tom Waits song Bruce Springsteen claimed as his own
Over the course of his long and illustrious career in the music industry, Bruce Springsteen has penned a seemingly endless array of songs which have courted the pop charts while simultaneously speaking to the lives and emotions of countless listeners across the world. This unique power to find mainstream success while remaining glued to staunch artistic principles is no easy feat, but one which puts ‘The Boss’ firmly in line with America’s all-time greatest songwriters, alongside the likes of Tom Waits.
Despite often exploring different avenues of artistic and musical inspiration, there are various parallels between the careers of Waits and Springsteen. Both artists, for instance, emerged onto the scene during the late 1960s and initially aimed to follow in the footsteps of pioneering figures like Bob Dylan. Although Waits has often leaned further towards the world of experimental music and jazz, while Springsteen has largely remained true to his heartland rock sound, there is definite crossover between their musical material, too.
After all, Springsteen made a name for himself by writing and performing songs about the plight of the common man, which is clearly something that resonated with Waits, who had similar aims during the early part of his career. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that both artists are outspoken about their appreciation of one another.
Springsteen, in particular, has long since been a disciple of Waits’ songwriting, maintaining particular reverence for the gravelly tones of Waits’ 1980 track ‘Jersey Girl’. Included on the seminal 1980 album Heartattack and Vine, Waits reportedly wrote the track for Kathleen Brennan, whom he went on to marry that same year, while she was spending time in New Jersey. No surprises, then, that the song resonated so well with New Jersey native Bruce Springsteen.
New Jersey has been a continued source of artistic inspiration for Springsteen, and while other artists and musicians might have looked further north, to New York City, ‘The Boss’ has always been rooted firmly in his home state. Inevitably, therefore, he instantly connected with ‘Jersey Girl’, as he did with the rest of Heartattack and Vine, which bears sonic similarities to his own seminal release, Nebraska, a few years later.
Before too long, Springsteen set about recording his own version of ‘Jersey Girl’, which was eventually released in 1984 as the B-side to the aptly named ‘Cover Me’. Although Springsteen changed a few of Waits’ original lyrics and added in an entirely new verse, the cover is a pretty faithful homage to the inspiration provided to the songwriter by Tom Waits.
On a few notable occasions, the two songwriting titans have appeared together onstage, often performing a rendition of ‘Jersey Girl’, which has become a staple of Springsteen’s live shows. Back in 1981, during a show at the now-demolished Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, Springsteen brought Waits out onto the stage to perform the song, introducing it by saying, “When I heard it, I remember it was one of those songs I said, ‘Well, I wish, I wish I’d wrote that.’”
It certainly falls in line with the type of song that Springsteen tended to write during the early 1980s, in the run-up to Nebraska, particularly given its New Jersey influences. Perhaps as a result of that fact, the songwriter has more or less adopted the song as his own, performing it during his live shows on a regular basis, most recently at a New Jersey show in 2023.
