Overall Rating — 10/10
Bruce Springsteen (also known as ‘The Boss’) recorded this track in May 1982, with all intentions of making it onto the ‘Nebraska’ album. Instead, it was released on ‘Born In The U.S.A.’ in 1984. This song provides a soft rock number on what I’d consider a rock album and explores how a burning desire the writer has for a woman. I would consider myself to still be a new listener of Springsteen but so far this is that has got my attention.
It opens with a train drum groove created by cross sticks on the drums. Adding to this sound, the guitar is playing a palm muted picking pattern and melodious keys can also be heard. “Hey little girl is your daddy home” is a line that shouldn’t be taken too literal. This can be backed up by the line “Tell me now baby is he good to you, and can he do to you the things that I do?”. The writer sketches himself to be backing his abilities as a lover compared to her current one and isn’t referring to a little girl and her father. I believe that the reference to “little girl” may be used in the sense of the woman’s maturity or the way this girl is making him feel, may remind him of being younger and falling for somebody the way he is.
“At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet” could be a sexual connotation towards the girl he is lusting for, or it could also represent the way the thought of this woman wakes him up at night making him feel sick. We again can see the desire he has for this girl as unbearable as he refers to a “a freight train running through the middle of my head” implying that this desire is powerful and unstoppable.
My favourite line in this track is “sometimes it’s like someone took a knife baby edgy and dull and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my skull”. I love the oxymoron of the knife being edgy and dull, suggesting that he is experiencing both types of pain that this burning desire for this woman is making him feel.
