Bruce Springsteen Sings the Alphabet

Today on Bruce Springsteen Sings the Alphabet, it's best friend week. Side two, track two, has us kissing the homies goodbye in Bruce's second love song in a row to his best pal Steven.

Click here for a subscribers-only video version of this podcast.

For years people heard Bobby Jean as a song about a girl who moved away. It's Bruce saying goodbye to Steven Van Zandt as he left the E Street Band. Chuck Plotkin calls it a love song to a pal.

We talk about Garry Tallent's sock hop bass line, why a song in A major feels like it's in a minor key, a saxophone that's sad but still cute in case you want to come back, the verse Stephen Hyden calls the most meta moment in Bruce Springsteen history.

It's best friend week. So go text an old friend. Bruce told you to.

How many adult male friends do you give Bobby Jean? Leave your rating in the episode comments at alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com.

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Chapters

01:55 Basic Facts!

04:25 The music

11:02 The lyrics

27:38 Ratings

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/subscribe

Leave your rating and see more show notes at alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com.

Today on Bruce Springsteen Sings the Alphabet, we flip the record. Side two, track one, and the song Bruce fought hardest to keep off the album.

Click here for a subscribers-only video version of this podcast.

No Surrender took three days at the Hit Factory in October 1983 and still never made it as a single. In fact, it almost never made it on the record. Bruce thought it was too naive for a record full of people whose lives weren’t working out.

Steven Van Zandt, already backing out of the E Street Band, told him he was wrong and more or less bullied it onto the album. Fourteen years later Bruce still wasn’t sure, but we are. It’s an all-timer for Rob, it opened the show we saw together in Dallas in 2023, and JB thinks it might be the first pop punk song.

We talk about why this song and Bobby Jean are really about Bruce and Steven and why you could hand every person in the arena a guitar and this song still wouldn’t be too big.

Watch the Flores brothers sing No Surrender with Bruce and have more fun at a Bruce show than anyone before or since, Houston 2014: https://youtu.be/53g8PQCnr-c

Here is our episode of Set Lusting Bruce with Jesse Jackson: https://youtu.be/bj3BypdWMCw?si=8KyPVVanSY9sagYg

How many drums and guitars do you give No Surrender? Leave your rating in the episode comments at http://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com.

Upgrade your subscription for video and the latest bonus ep (usually a week early!): https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/subscribe

Chapters

02:14 Basic Facts!

17:23 The music

27:23 The lyrics

36:01 Ratings

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/subscribe

Today on Bruce Springsteen Sings the Alphabet, the sexy song that everybody covers and neither of us wants to sing.

I’m On Fire closes side one with three notes on a synthesizer, some brushes on a snare, a palm-muted guitar and those ghostly hoo-hoos. Two minutes and change. It sounds like fall, it sounds a little haunted, it sounds like it wandered over from Nebraska, and it went to number one in the Netherlands, where for three weeks in 1985 Bruce was basically the Beatles.

We talk about why the most stripped-down song on an arena-rock record is the one that gets covered by everybody from Johnny Cash to Bats for Lashes, why Rob only likes it on vinyl, and what the last two lines do that the first one doesn’t. We also talk about the first verse, but only because we have to. We don’t make the rules.

How many freight trains do you give this song? Leave your rating in the episode comments at alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com.

Upgrade your subscription for video and the latest bonus ep (usually a week early!).

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Chapters

02:24 Basic Facts

11:10 The Music

17:54 The Lyrics

29:15 The Ratings

33:38 Next time: No Surrender, and how to find us

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/subscribe

Today on Bruce Springsteen Sings the Alphabet: the one that almost went to Nebraska and didn’t.

He had a job, he had a girl. Then it all went to hell. You know, the rain and the car wash of it all. Downbound Train is a short song about a guy who isn’t in the driver’s seat, and it’s certainly an album favorite for the fellas (or the weakest thing Bruce released since the second album, if you ask Dave Marsh). We also have thoughts about Dave Marsh.

We talk about the three versions of this song that exist and why Rob hates one of them, how Roy Bittan carted a 200-pound synthesizer into the studio, and why Max’s snare drum is the piece of tape holding this whole record together.

How many whining whistles do you give Downbound Train? Tell us in the comments below.

We’ve also dropped our first bonus episode of the new run, the 2023 All Media Underload. We hit the high points of our 2023 lists since we never dropped an episode that year. It’s a subscriber only episode, but everyone gets a free preview episode (I think?).

https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/p/bonus-ep-all-media-underload

Chapters

04:04 Basic Facts!

10:00 The music

19:27 The lyrics

26:14 Ratings

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/subscribe

Today on Bruce Springsteen Sings the Alphabet, we’re somehow in the Bs and in the Ws with “Working on the Highway,” the jangly rocker off Born in the USA.

We dig into what makes it move, what it’s really saying about love and work, and why the union hall matters more than you’d think.

We also talk about what makes for good songwriting, which Jon Favreau movies this is exactly like, and some personal stories along the way. Plus, as usual, we talk about making records and other silly stuff with your friends.

Head over to http://alphabeticalspringstee.substack.com to leave your own song rating.

Check out the video episode here: https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/p/working-on-the-highway

Leave your own rating in the comments, please!

Chapters

02:59 Exploring the Song’s Musical Elements

05:54 Lyrics Analysis and Themes

08:55 Discussion on Songwriting and Recording Process

12:01 Character and Story Development in Lyrics

15:00 Cultural References and Context

18:10 Final Thoughts and Ratings

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/subscribe

Driving into Darlington County with two hundred dollars in your pocket. What a feeling!? Two fellas drive into a new town looking for a good time. How does it end for our two protagonists this time?

It’s fun. It’s raucous. It’s rock’n’roll.

Is it good? Certainly. But is it important? We’re not giving away the ending in the show notes.

We ask the real questions this week.

And we honor Dolly because this episode was recorded weeks ago.

Leave your rating in the episode comments at https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/p/episode-7-darlington-county

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Chapters

01:04 — Bruce’s birthday

03:06 — Meeting famous people without making things awkward

07:20 — Remembering Dolly Parton

10:01 — Could Dolly have covered “Darlington County”?

11:08 — Basic Facts!

13:23 — The music

18:11 — The album’s characters, insecurity, and disappointment

20:25 — Breaking down the lyrics

29:32 — Ratings and final thoughts

32:13 — How to follow and support the show

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/subscribe

This week on Bruce Springsteen Sings the Alphabet, Rob and JB talk about Donna Summer’s almost disco hit, Cover Me.

Believe it or not, Bruce originally wrote this song at Quincy Jones request, but you’ll have to listen to the ep for all the details.

This Billboard top 10 single sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and definitely put Bruce on the pop fan’s radar (but there’s still plenty of muscular rock’n’roll guitar, don’t worry, fellas).

We decide if the lyrics are deep, shallow, or if that even matters. Talk about what a Donna cover would sound like, and hand out disco balls.

For more from Rob and JB (including video episodes) head over to alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com.

00:00 Opening banter—and some thoughts about choreography

01:08 The origins of “Cover Me”

06:55 How the song developed and was recorded

12:56 Chart performance and reception

17:19 Rock, disco, and the song’s musical influences

23:03 Bruce’s guitar work

26:00 Moving from political themes to personal ones

27:10 Mood, vibe, and emotional impact

29:54 Whether simple lyrics can still have depth

34:01 The subversive history of disco

37:00 Final thoughts and ratings

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/subscribe

Today on Bruce Springsteen Sings the Alphabet: We kick things off with a world-wide unanimous banger from the boss.

The song is as famous for its perceived patriotism as it is for its cease and desist letters to presidential campaigns. It’s somehow patriotic and ironically patriotic all at once. A satire packaged inside a genuine, heart-felt, sing along of a pop rock song.

While this song feels like a case of, “What hasn’t been said about this song,” it turns out we found plenty to say.

We’d also be interested in hearing what you have to say. Please shoot us a line or drop your rating in one of the feeds.

As always, if you think a friend would enjoy this, pass it along:

https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/p/born-in-the-usa?r=44wa19&showWelcomeOnShare=true

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/subscribe

Some people hear this one and file it away as a slow, sexy love song. It is not a love song. It is about Abu Ghraib.

Side two, track two. The last song on the EP and the last day of American Beauty Week.

We get into:

The trick Bruce is pulling: pedal steel, twinkly piano, a whisper in your ear, before he walks you straight into the worst thing we’ve ever done.

Genesis chapter three.

One of the few times Bruce swears on a record and exactly why it hits.

JB coins the phrase "sexy doubt.”

And the decade old rumor that Tom Morello is going to cover this someday.

Heads up, this one has the explicit tag, and we spend a good while on what the song was about then and what it is about now.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/subscribe

Coming at you with a friggin’ power-pop song today. Hurry Up Sundown may seem like a shimmery, empty, late-summer dream, but Rob drops a homily in here that would make even the harshest shut-up-and-singer reconsider.

Since it’s side two, track one, Bruce reminds us that we are supposed to be having a good time here. It is a wall of sound power pop song, it is almost entirely one guy playing everything he could find in the room, and it has never been performed live for a human audience. Not once. We have thoughts about that.

Is it a straightforward pop song, or is it an ode to the plight of the worker and cry for the night that follows a hard day?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/subscribe

What does the album High Hopes, Tony Toni Toné, Record Store Day, and the Farfisa have to do with each other? This song. Kind of.

Join us for the second song in our track-by-track exploration of Bruce Springsteen's American Beauty EP.

We also revisit Rob's campaign to have Dream Baby Dream scratched from the historical record and why JB played an out of tune piano with a bottle of Evan Williams in a fur cap.

Anyway, seems like there might be something about Mary (Mary). Let's go find out. Maybe she's over in Charlestown.

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/subscribe

Hello Bruce fans. In case you’ve been wondering, “Are JB and Rob dead?” The answer is no. We are in fact alive and better than ever. Here’s the real question, does being better mentally and physically lead to more entertaining podcasts? Probably not. But who knows?

All that to say, we’re back to the Bosscast and we’re excited to talk about music, (WITH YOU!) again. We missed you. Seriously, all of you. The ones we knew, the ones we didn’t, and they ones we haven’t met yet.

So buckle up, enjoy the ride, and let us know what you think—about the music, about the latest tour, about your life for the last five years.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com/subscribe

The final episode of our original run. We thought we were done... but we were wrong!

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This was our first episode ever. We were just a couple boys in our summer clothes.

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Bruce will give until there's nothing left.

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Bruce didn't say goodbye.

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Bruce wanted you to heal him, but instead you set him on fire.

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Bruce counted the band in and kicked into overdrive!

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Bruce got somebody new.

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