Good news: Bruce Springsteen is finally fixing the lyrics to “Thunder Road”
Does Mary's dress sway, or does Mary's dress wave? One is clearly correct.
Music News Bruce Springsteen
People sometimes get obsessed with things that are, oh, let’s say stupid or meaningless or completely incorrect, but that’s definitely not what’s happening with the “debate” surrounding the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.” No sir, this is a legitimate thing that people interpret in different ways, like that dress or whatever another example of this phenomenon is, and it is not our place to say which thing is correct or not… No, just kidding. There’s very clearly a correct thing here, it’s just that—for four decades—Bruce Springsteen himself had it wrong. So, here’s a quiz: In “Thunder Road,” what does Mary’s dress do? The screen door has just slammed and she’s dancing across the porch like a vision while the radio plays “Only The Lonely,” but what does her dress do?
It “sways,” obviously. Come on. It rhymes with plays. Swaying is a thing that dresses do. How could there be any argument? Well, for 46 years, every official version of the lyrics has said “waves” instead of “sways” even though that doesn’t track with either the rhyme or basic logic. It’s apparently been a thing for some time now that Springsteen fans will argue over which word is right, since one can clearly be heard in the song but the other is printed on Springsteen’s website and in his official songbook.
Writing for The New Yorker, David Remnick decided to investigate this mystery and try to figure out which word is the right one by talking to people on both sides of the debate and… yeah, it’s “sways.” Come on. That comes straight from Springsteen’s longtime friend and manager Jon Landau, who said it’s “sways” and that “any typos in official Bruce material will be corrected.” He also added that dresses “do not know how to ‘wave.”” More mysteries should be solved by just asking the people involved. It seems pretty easy. Now, could somebody please figure out the lyrics to “Dancing In The Dark” next? Why can’t you start a fire without a shark? And in “Born To Run,” who’s this tramp Gus? What’s his deal? And while we’re here, what are literally all the lyrics in “Born In The U.S.A.” other than the chorus? That seems like a fun song about how great America is, but we just want to double-check.
184 Comments
I clicked on this article genuinely expecting to read that Bruce was rewriting “The door’s open but the ride ain’t free” to, I don’t know, “Your consent is a must for me” and that Sam considered this to be fixing the song.
knowing the AV Club….i thought it would have been about “You ain’t a beauty, but, hey, you’re alright”
Don’t worry, I’m sure Jezebel will have a thoughtful, nuanced take on that./s, just in case
Don’t disagree with that take, though. You get put in the grays for five years.
You get put in the grays for five years.That would be a step up from where I am now.
The A.V. ClubYou ain’t a beauty, but, hey you’re alright
Speaking as a woman of the female persuasion, I love that line and always have.
That line is almost disturbingly popular between a number of my relatives and their spouses. (Which is both kind of endearing and not entirely inaccurate.)
“I’m going down, down, down, down… because she did it for me and what’s fair is fair.”
ALL THE STARS!!!!!
Remember kids, “no” means “you’re a wire”. 😀
“Unhoused persons like us…grown woman with agency, we were born to [non-ableist word TBD]”
That’d be painfully on-brand.
Similarly, I thought he might have been revisiting “your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet”.
BRUUUUUCE!!!!!!!
just making up a thing and then getting mad at that thing, only normal comments here on the internet
Oh, what a coincidence. I was listening to this song in my car hole earlier, wondering what exactly he was singing there.
I think a lot of the people who heard “car hole” were kids at the time who thought it was funny that Moe would make up a phrase that no one says to mean garage. The people who heard “car hold” thought it was funny for Moe to think the word “garage” was fancy. It’s kind of a weird phenomenon. It’s not like misheard lyrics because the joke still works in a completely different way depending on what was heard.For the record, I think the argument that dresses don’t know how to wave is as silly as saying that dresses sway. People in dresses sway, not dresses.
What Moe says is funny for both reasons, no? No one in the universe says “car hold” either. (You actually just taught me that anybody anywhere thought the line was “car hold,” which to me is a really obvious mis-hearing.)
As a kid, I couldn’t tell if it was “car hole” or “car hold” – the former is funny because it’s a low brow, and the latter is funny because it sounds like Moe is trying to outdo the fanciness of ‘garage’.
Or he thinks garage sounds too French so he wants to describe it overly literally in plain English, which is an interpretation that works with both. I heard it as “car hole” as a kid, but if you’re older and used to hearing xenophobic and anti-intellectual Americans, “car hold” is basically “freedom fries.”
I am 99% certain the line is car hold. I will admit the possibility it was ‘hole’, but it’s a slim one.
Ah, that trademark Barsanti wit.
It’s Schrödinger’s dress.
“…there’s also a lot of drugs in here.”
My one main flaw with Bruce is that he always sounds like your drunk uncle who only remembers one line of the song but insists that he can sing the whole thing so you just sit there watching some drunk guy incoherently mumbling like 85% of the song. And that’s Bruce Springsteen a guy who legit can’t sing being a singer and succeeding due to being a male Florence Foster Jenkins. (I say that as a huge fan of a few of his songs. He just can’t learn the words to his own songs it seems.)
You may be confused with Dylan.Or possibly Waits (though with him that’s a large part of the appeal)
I know some people who will assault you for saying a word wrong about Dylan. But my take is that you could write song lyrics that are the best thing since the Sermon on the Mount, but if your voice could be used to sonically remove barnacles from ships, your music is still going to be inaccessible for many people.Hell even the Sermon on the Mount wasn’t all that popular.
I love a lot of covers of Dylan songs – he is legitimately an excellent songwriter. Don’t listen to much of his own albums, though.
As far as Waits goes, if you listen to the deep cuts in the Orphans album, you begin to realize how his usual whiskey soaked bohemian with a pack of Luckys is more of a character choice than his actual singing voice.
Yeah, that’s a definite Dylan descriptor. Drunk uncle and everything.
I’ve never had any difficulty understanding what Bruce is saying, like at all? I didn’t realise anyone did? He enunciates every word more than enough.
Have you tried singing a Springsteen song? He only makes it sound easy.
This is accurate.
I’ve done a few in karaoke and always tripped up by how quickly he moves into the next line. Mentally, I think of those lines as drawn out but they come fast:. Thunder Road in particular is sneaky because it starts leisurely and steadily picks up its pace through the song (And I know you’re lonely for words that I ain’t spoken / But tonight we’ll be free, all the promises’ll be broken / There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away).
This is painfully wrong on so many levels.
It depends on the song. With the high-octane rockers like Born In the USA or songs with impressionistic lyrics like Jackson Cage, he tends to give a less precise vocal performance. But for the story songs like The River, My Hometown, or Highway Patrolman, where the music is secondary to the lyrics, he’s always super articulate.And yes, Bruce is a very good singer. I mean, it’s rock and roll. It’s not supposed to sound pretty.
I never ever got that sense from Springsteen. If anything, it always felt like he was tying to read novels over the course of 5 minutes.Of course the volume dial gets set pretty differently from his arena rock early days and his later “it’s just me an guitar in the middle of a room” days.
Although I can’t get on board with this sentiment, I think you’re absolutely correct when it comes to one particular song: his rendition of “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town.” By the 25th goddamn time he screams “SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN’ TO TOWN!!!” I’m ready to slit my wrists.
Mainly posting to note that Bruce Springsteen has essentially vanished off the air in the Southern California market.The rock stations that he used to be frequently played on have either vanished or dropped into a more traditional ‘classic’ rock format where you’ll only hear “I’m on Fire” or “Born in East LA” on his birthday. There’s been a huge wave of stations switching to nearly identical formats that cover everything from the ‘70s through early ‘00s but the styles they choose are dominantly genres where Springsteen isn’t considered. Doesn’t really fit next to Depeche Mode… or Metallica… or Taylor Dane… or…It’s odd that it’s become nearly impossible to find someone considered so essential and central to American rock, but I can still count on hearing someone like Ed Sheeran across every station on the dial. I get it, current releases and success vs. long term effect and stature, but it’s weird.
It’s like that in NorCal too, just fyi.. A bunch of the stations here have been swallowed by Audicy (sp?) to the point that there are now two ‘classic rock’ stations separated only by how far into the the 90’s they consider ‘classic’. One stops firmly at anything post Nirvana.
Interestingly, every station remotely in a compatible format plays ENDLESS Tom Petty (not that I’m complaining. Petty’s great. RIP But would it kill to play something OTHER than Freefalling or American Girl?) but you’d think a big chunk of Petty fans would also be quite happy w/Bruce.
Yeah, the market consolidation in radio is hideous. I’d hopes that Pandora/Spotify etc. would be an antidote for that but it’s even worse on those services – and it’s amazing that they’d somehow manage to make the royalty situation even WORSE for the acts they play.I think we’re down to two companies owning over 90% of the stations that are on the air. It’s depressing as a fan of music, as I can tell my “listening tastes” have artificially compressed into a series of tight lanes that don’t give much outside of them. I know that the streaming services can be ‘tuned’, but the negative effects of a song suddenly injecting a ton of crap you have zero interest in hearing onto your station because you ‘liked’ it make that problematic.
Because I am an old, I don’t use Pandora, or Spotify. I’m far far too cheap to pay for ad free service and I’ll be damned if I’mhanding over yet MORE of data to ye ANOTHER conpany so they can suddenly show me MyPillow ads because I listened to Oingo Boingo’s ‘Capitalism’. So if terrestrial radio has nothing and NPR isn’t of interest at the moment, it’s down to my ripped CD collection, all of which fits on my phone now, and that means my musical evolution stopped around 2000 + the odd Tom Waits release…
You say that like it is a bad thing.My phone has something like a century of popular music on it, which sadly really only works out to about five days of music. (Covid project buying/ripping them…it’s amazing how cheap you can get used CD’s) One of those fun “huh” moments……when you realize your playlist is longer and more varied than the radio stations play list.Been thinking about writing a DJ script and having someone on fiver with a decent voice record the intro spots so I can build a playlist with that full “radio” experience.
I was going to make a little fun of you, but Tom Waits we can agree on.
This is why my passenger seat has so many CDs it that the seatbelt light is always on.
I’ve been listening to Little Steven’s Underground Garage for 20 years (Bruce connection is incidental to this convo). It’s syndicated and you can listen to all the shows on its website (it’s functionally the same as a podcast). It’s a lot of fun garage and punk, with new bands sprinkled in at a digestible rate, maybe two a month. Commercials are very minimal.
I’m with you on being stingy BUT the few dollars I pay a year for Spotify Premium is THE one subscription I never, ever regret.
I know you said you don’t want another service, but SiriusXM is pretty cheap, and they have channel dedicated _entirely_ to the Boss: “E-Street Radio.” Live concerts, covers, alternate versions; they go deep.While I’m on the subject, “The Loft” is another great channel there. It’s not on the bird, but you can get it online.
Same for me…. I think the only modern stuff I’ve bought since 2000 has been various Jack White projects(and he’s a retro guy anyway), one Adele album, and Lorde’s first album. I haven’t listened to terrestrial radio in almost 20 years, and I let my Sirius/XM lapsed a couple of years ago.
We have a good listener supported station in Baltimore, WTMD. They’re more likely to play Springsteen than others. http://www.wtmd.org
Did listeners gain at all from the consolidation? I can’t think of anything?Usually there’s some PR line like lower prices or more variety or more availability, but I can’t think of a single thing the consumer got from lifting the limits on the number of stations a conglomerate can own.
If you’re into the slim handful of formats, you’re in a golden age. Also if you’re an executive at one of the media conglomerates. Those mostly white guys are doing EXCEPTIONALLY well with the consolidation.Everyone else, YMMV.LA’s not a ‘normal’ market, the level of variety was probably a bit of an outlier. Prior to the ClearChannel Dominion I had a choice of a hard rock station, a basic ‘rock’ station, ‘new age’, couple country choices for differing genres within the form, couple rap choices with the same, an ‘alternative’ station or two, and an entire galaxy of Spanish, Vietnamese, Religious etc. options.Now? The rock stations all play the same playlist. Same for the country. The rap stations have been knocked back to one station. Most of the urban dance stations are gone or converted over to Soccer Mom Radio. Almost the entirety of non-English stations have gone (there’s a handful, but only one or two in the ‘sweet spot’ bands).It’s been a bloodbath of creativity that’s wound up with a tiny handful of artists making a ton of money for a tiny handful of companies. I think at this point, we don’t need perspective. The return of massive industry consolidations combined with the parasitic venture capital companies are most likely going to be cause #1 for “why is there a glowing cinder where a planet shoulda been”
“Radio” is almost dead. Millennials and Gen Z generally don’t listen to the radio unless forced to, like when you drive an older car or a rental without Bluetooth. I’m a Gen X’er, and the only time I listen to the radio is when I’m in Maine and I listen to Stephen King’s radio station 100.3, because it isn’t corporate rock.
Radio? Who needs a radio?
“Yeah, the market consolidation in radio is hideous… I think we’re down to two companies owning over 90% of the stations that are on the air.”Along with that disastrous, draconian crime bill, the 1996 Telecommunications Act is probably the most shameful and destructive legacy of the Clinton administration. It’s like if you specifically asked someone to write a piece of legislation 180 degrees opposed to anything and everything in the public’s interest.
Ooh, I hate when they only play one or two songs by an artist. I listen to 1st Wave on Sirius XM (alternative music from the 80s) and they pretty much only play Let’s Go to Bed and Just Like Heaven by the Cure. They branch out a little more with Depeche Mode (mainly because their one DJ, Richard Blade, is a huge fan of DM.) But, yeah, most artists they play it will be one of two or three songs by them. Except Elvis Costello, but I don’t like Elvis Costello, so it annoys me.
I don’t listen to standard radio stations (my new car came with Sirius XM radio included and I vastly prefer listening to that over standard radio, and it works where cell/internet service sucks so it’s an excellent choice when driving around Vermont) and I still hear Springsteen on the classic rock or “full spectrum” rock stations every now and then. Fun fact: I love me some classic Tom Petty but I don’t really care for Springsteen at all.
Ironically, both Bruce and Tom wrote songs calling out the homogenization and commercialization of mainstream radio:
Radio RadioFunk Pop-a-RollCapitol RadioThe Spirit of Radio
Taylor Dane…I love her voice.
Didn’t realize it until you mentioned it, but yeah…..he’s just gone.Looked him up on youtube a second ago, lots of country music. Like for a guy that was the name of American Rock for a couple decades there is a truly stupid amount of country on his channel.
I would park him next to Johnny Cash style wise but Cash is way better.
I don’t listen to radio anymore so I’m not the best judge here but isn’t radio nowadays the media equivalent of:- those crappy 25 cent candy machines at the front of low rent grocery stores- the cloth towel loop drying machine in a public bathroom- any given piece of physical infrastructure at JFK airport- a 1980s video game arcade machine that isn’t in a hipster, retro, burger and beer joint- a beat up 1980s RV- the cigarette lighter piece in your car that used to go where that 9v round hole is- the last smoking section in a restaurant somewhere in the USYou know: something old and useless that nobody really wants anymore but that is useful once in a very, very, very rare while… Like if you got a cheap rental car in a city you were travelling to and you hadn’t yet gotten around to buying a simcard…
It’s a case where the replacement isn’t serving the function that the service originally provided.Part of radio is the introduction to new music in genres you are already have chosen. Streaming does not get this right – the services don’t have the human touch that can tell them that someone listening to a dominant rock playlist that thumbs up ONE Gorillaz song probably isn’t going to appreciate spending the next several days ferreting out the sudden influx of hardcore rap.Of course, the service of radio is no longer providing the service originally provided. That’s the consolidation problem. The previous major benefit of listening to streaming while driving – much lower volume of commercials – is now either a paid service or just not offered. Were radio not locked in a near monopolistic death spiral with venture capitalists, they might have been able to offer a compelling counter to draw listeners back. As it is, not so much. When you’re competing against fast food, offering fast food that tastes even blander isn’t really a winner.
It’s a case where the replacement isn’t serving the function that the service originally provided.Yeah, long ago, there were radio DJs with their ears to the ground who introduced their audiences to music that almost nobody had ever heard before. Now it’s all “Wisdom Of The Mob”, which is surprisingly good at many unexpected things, but not so good at others.Plus lots of Payola, of course.
I like radio in the car and when I’m working in the garage or around the house. My reasoning is this:1. playlists I make end up getting repetitive after a while. 2. Radio gives me new songs that I may not have heard or the occasional old classic that I haven’t heard in a while3. Local weather is nice to hear every now and again4. I like a good radio show. There are not a lot, but a show with good hosts is enjoyable.
I recently bought an ‘85 Corvette. The radio antenna motor was broken and unable to raise or lower the antenna, but the car would keep sending power to the motor when the car was turned on or off because the sensor wasn’t getting the signal that the antenna was fully raised or retracted. Left unchecked, it would kill the battery.The car has an aftermarket CD player with Bluetooth. I stream everything or just listen to the ~2000 songs I have on my phone anyway, so I removed the antenna assembly/wiring completely. Nothing of value was lost.
The Cheech and Chong parody?
Good. Bruce Springsteen’s music SUCKS. It’s boring, his voice is annoying, and the lyrics, when intelligible, are lame. You know this is true.
There used to be this company called Clearchannel, that basically bought up radio stations and made them output generic lists of like 200 songs. They also got into concerts and scheduling big arenas. So if you didn’t play ball with their arenas, you didn’t make the cut on their generic song lists.You started hearing negative things about Clearchannel, so they did the obvious thing and cleaned up their act.Haha, got you. They just changed their name to Iheart Media.
I loathed them when they were Clearchannel; I loathe them just as much as iheartmedia. Reactionary conservative simpleminded dipshits. They take over a station and all of a sudden you’re getting editorials from Fox News. Sorry, I’m not brain dead. The minute I hear iheartmedia crap, I no longer listen to that station. The Washington DC area has the worst radio in the country anyway. Every single station plays the same 10 songs which have been put through some sort of blandifier so that nothing about them ever gets your pulse racing.Several years ago (at least 10 years ago) I was driving home after work and switched to what I expected to be a classical music station and heard “Hot Child in the City.” It turned out that the station had been sold, and for the next 60 days or so the DJs were free to play anything at all they wanted, and they played all the music they liked the best. It was like heaven to my ears. There was everything from Classical to Rock to Jazz to R&B to Folk — everything except that horrible bland shit I’d turned to the Classical channel to escape. And then after 60 days it became a Clearchannel station and it lost its place in my presets.
Speaking of “I’m on Fire,” can he fix those lyrics too?“Hey, little girl, is your daddy home?
Did he go away and leave you all alone?
I got a bad desire”I mean, can he perform this in 2021?
Soooooo many songs have that kind of stuff in them. There’s an old song that has lines like “What’s your name, who’s your daddy, is he rich like me?”I mean, did that EVER not scan as creepy?
I think you guys are reading these lyrics’ intent wrong. It’s not “creeping on an underage girl”. It’s more like “talking to a young adult woman using infantalizing language”. Condescending, sure. Charming? You’d have to ask them, but probably not meant as chasing underage girls like you are thinking.
There’s an old song that has lines like “What’s your name, who’s your daddy, is he rich like me?”The Zombies, Time of the Season
‘There’s an old song…’Yes, ‘Time of the Season’ by the Zombies. Often thought of as one of the greatest songs of the 1960s.Many MANY songs have, well, odd lyrics.
Time of the Season, by The Zombies! Actually a great song, but creepy as fuck.Sexually creepy and/or weird songs were surprisingly common back in the day.Go Away, Little Girl (she’s underage)Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon (same)Young Girl, one of several Gary Puckett songs about underage girlsLots of Chuck Berry(The amount of songs about 16 and 17 year olds well into the 1980’s is kind of shocking)
Yummy, Yummy, Yummy (about swallowing semen after a beej, the songwriter admitted that years later)In The Summertime (If her daddy’s rich, take her out for a meal
If her daddy’s poor, just do what you feel)not to mention all the songs that were clearly about fucking, but somehow escaped the radio banhammer:How Do You Do, by Mouth and McNeil (Na Nana Nananana does a lot of heavy lifting in that song)Minnie Riperton’s Loving You(“every time that we…ooooh(followed by orgasmic squeal))
I Touch Myself, The DivinylsLay Lady Lay, Bob DylanLady Marmelade, LabelleAfternoon Delight.These were all from the time that radio still banned songs.
I Touch Myself is clearly not about fucking, it’s about masturbating.
Little girl can be a term of endearment from a boyfriend, Asking if your parents were gone in HS. Come on,
They have to make room for playing the same 3 Tom Petty songs over and over and over.Don’t get me wrong – I love Tom Petty. But goddamn, SoCal radio has been playing “American Girl,” “Won’t Back Down” and “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” nonstop forever.
you’ll only hear “I’m on Fire” or “Born in East LA” on his birthday.Classic rock stations celebrate Bruce’s birthday with a Cheech & Chong parody tune that references Randy Newman’s I Love LA? California’s weirder than I remember.
Somewhat similar thought I was listening to XRT in Chicago the other day. I remember hearing on many summer mornings “Tangled Up In Blue” on the station. Hell I got a vivid memory of me going down Lake Shore Drive to my boat listening to it as the sun was coming up. That orange haze to the lakefront and the song were perfect.Today even after he sold his catalog you cannot hear Dylan on the radio. I did hear Jakob the other day which is always welcome.
You should try waiting to hear a Beatles song on UK radio. Must be years since I last heard one on the radio that wasn’t part of a Beatles documentary.
Must be years since I last heard one on the radioThat surprises me. Are you lot collectively taking the piss out of Paul & Ringo while you still can?
There was a DJ who, maybe about 10 years ago I think, said he wasn’t going to play Beatles songs anymore because they were too ubiquitous. There was a major backlash at the time, and I think he reversed his decision (having picked up a ton of publicity) but I think since then they have quietly dropped off a lot of playlists.
There was a DJ who, maybe about 10 years ago I think, said he wasn’t going to play Beatles songs anymore because they were too ubiquitous. He wasn’t wrong.
There are only so many minutes in the day for a station to fill, and it’s been nearly 50 years since Born to Run came out. Nearly 40 since Born in the USA and Nebraska. A LOT of music has come out since then. Number of minutes has not increased. And that’s before we consider that the difference between now and BITUSA is the same as the difference between that album and WW2. Shit going back to Born to Run and it’s the difference between Born to Run and 1930. Radio moves on!
“Radio moves on”Counterpoint:
Classic rock stations dont play the variety they could.
Except a lot of bands between then and now were influenced at least partially by Bruce Springsteen, but literally no bands (except maybe Brian Setzer and his bands) in the 70s and 80s were influenced by the music of the 30s and 40s (not to say they don’t like that stuff, but they weren’t influenced by it.)
Complaining about what’s on the radio is like complaining about what’s on the three main broadcast networks. You have a few more choices now.
lol, people still listen to terrestrial radio?
It’s one thing to get in your car and set up your playlists and what not for a 45 minute car ride. It’s another thing to get in the car spend 10 minutes in the driveway because the driver of the car is scrolling around on their phone looking for their “preferred playlist of the day”….for the five minute trip to the grocery store.
I don’t get that either, I have Sirius in both my cars, pretty easy solution and hundreds of channels to choose from, ad free.
I’m guessing these are probably (formerly Clear Channel) iHeart Radio stations. I’m pretty sure you could go to any city in the country and you will hear identical content throughout the day.
Radio sucks. Oh, I’m sure there are some small stations out there playing good stuff and not relying on hard set playlists, but, for the most part, radio sucks. Because large corporations own most of them and they have a relatively small playlist for their DJs to choose from (if the DJs get choice at all.) Even Sirius XM, which I listen to mostly, has a problem with major repitition. Why is it that you have an entire decade of alternative/new wave music to play, but I still hear Let’s Go to Bed three times a week (I listen only in the car, 20 minutes to work and 20 minutes home, 5 days a week. I shouldn’t hear it that often.) Honestly, I had my best listening experiences that weren’t me choosing the music on Pandora. It’s been a while, but I heard a lot of songs/artists I’d never heard that I loved because of that.
I never imagined a future where I’d hear more Depeche than Springsteen on classic rock radio, but, um 6th grade me would be ecstatic to learn that.
What? LA has terrible radio stations, but Bruce’s hit songs (Dancing in the Dark, Born in the USA, I’m on Fire) are still in regular rotation.
That’s why you need to listen to The Greatest Rock and Roll Radio Show on the Planet – “Rock and Roll Radio” on High Volume Music Radio. It’s a show that plays great rock and roll, and goes way beyond the 35 songs that Classic Vinyl or Classic Rewind play. No ballads, no mid-tempo stuff, no “bits” by the host – just rock and roll where every song is designed to get your ass up off your seat.Plus, there is a Ladies That Rock segment on each show – 5 songs by female rock bands. No one else does that, and it flat-out rocks.Here’s the website, I hope you check it out and enjoy it: http://www.highvolumemusicradio.com, or download their app.
Part of that is regional – I listened to Classic Rock stations growing up in the Midwest and California. You’d hear Springsteen a fair amount of the time, but not nearly as much as, say, Van Halen. I took a couple of trips to the mid-Atlantic in the 90’s. Nonstop Springsteen. There was also a ton of Billy Joel being played. The latter is someone who (at least for the early phase of his career) was squarely within classic rock station playlists. Now, he’s almost totally exiled to the adult hits/oldies format.But overall, you’re correct: while Classic Rock now gets dissed as “old white male boomer music,” it was once one of the most stylistically diverse formats around. A Classic Rock station might play everything from the staple British guitar groups (Beatles, Stones, Led Zep, Who, etc.), to 60’s summer of love type stuff (Hendrix, Joplin, Grateful Dead), soul and funk (Parliament, Stevie Wonder, Sly and The Family Stone) to 70’s and early 80’s punk and new wave (Talking Heads, The Clash, Devo, Blondie). You might even hear a little bit of folk (Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell).At some point – about the early 2000’s – Classic Rock began pruning their playlists to what I personally call “bonehead” rock – wall to wall Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, AC/DC, and very little in between. Don’t get me wrong: I like some of those artists’ music. I just don’t need it 24/7. I want more variety. On top of that, they began drastically winnowing down which songs were played from the artists who were still in rotation. In the early ‘90s an act like Santana could have roughly a dozen or so different songs in regular rotation. By the early 2000’s that was down to about two hits (usually “Black Magic Woman” and “Oye Como Va”), before (again) they were purged from the playlists entirely.
I just realized that I never knew the name of the song that is obviously “Oye Como Va” now that I see those words.
I once was in an e-mail conversation with the manager of “The Sound” before it got turned into Spanish. Its increasingly decreasing list of songs that it would play made me stop listening. I told him so, and he didn’t care. The songs they played were ones that the fewest people switched off, because they need listeners to stay on for the commercials.In SoCal, you have to go up The 101 and listen to KTYD in Santa Barbara (certainly can get it in Thousand Oaks, probably also Malibu). It plays Bruce.As a poster below notes, “Audacy” is taking over the programming of way too many stations. Apparently, it has the best —i.e., most profitable — playlist. And that’s the only thing that matters.
KROQ’s Digital #2 is pretty good if your radio can get it. Lots of forgotten alternative songs.
I don’t know if I’d say that Springsteen is essential to American rock. Although he’s got some great stuff, I think there’s an element of Springsteen that has more profound regional importance than national importance. I think he’s like a Northeastern Lynyrd Skynyrd—an act that quintessential in one region with some nationally important influence.
It’s crazy. When I was a kid in the 80s, the oldies stations were ’30s-’50s; now the classic rock stations literally play Nirvana, No Doubt, and Blink-182 as part of their ‘throwback’ playlist.
“Bruce Springsteen has essentially vanished off the air in the Southern California market”He’s still stuck in Nebraska, trying to figure out how to make a left turn.
I think the correct line is “Her dress Shazaams”
Pyle!
Thank heaven that’s finally wrapped up. Like a douche.
Another roamer in the breeze?
If you need privacy, there’s a bathroom on the right.
“He also added that dresses “do not know how to ‘wave.””Well, shit. Looks like we’re gonna have to change the Star Spangled Banner. Turns out that, say, that star-spangled banner cannot wave – this is the land of the free, and the home of fabric that can only sway.
dress=/=flagPlus generally YOU wave a flag. Like swoop it with your arms. Like a checkered flag at the races. When it’s stationary on a pole it flaps or flies.
funny. I always interpreted the Star Spangled Banner as the flag waving over a fort or other location and not someone (a bannerman?) standing when the dust settles and still waving it.
Specifically over Fort McHenry in Maryland which Francis Scott Key was writing about.
Flags wave in the breeze. Flags are made of fabric. Dresses are made of fabric.Fabric in general waves when correctly acted upon. It’s part of the entire thing that fabric does. Waving includes in definition “2. move to and fro with a swaying or undulating motion while remaining fixed to one point. “the flag waved in the wind””. Dresses – more than almost any other article of clothing – are mostly capable of waving in the breeze presuming there’s enough fabric for any movement. The dress, fixed to the wearer’s body, by design frequently includes large amounts of excess fabric that can be blown about by any breeze or other air movement.You want to talk artist’s intent, fine. He intended to write what he wrote, he intended to sing what he sang. Apparently the two may not have exactly matched.The statement that “dresses “do not know how to ‘wave.”” was likely a flip answer, and including it as a reason why is only truly workable as a joke. Sure. Fabric – unliving, unthinking fabric – does not know how to ‘wave’. Barring a complete revelation and revolution in our understanding of intelligence and fabric, it also does not know how to ‘sway’, ‘think’, ‘move independently of outside force’ or any of the other things we normally ascribe to living things that have nerves, musculature, etc.
It should be noted I pulled my answer directly (and with relative ease) out of my ass.But damn son, good hustle.
I could swoop a dress with my arms, including the bottom half while wearing it if it’s not too tight.
#teamwave
From Merriam Webster:
Wave:
2: to float, play, or shake in an air current : move loosely to and fro : FLUTTER. flags waving in the breeze
A flag still isn’t a dress. The reason people balk at the idea of using “waves” when referring to a dress that is being worn, is the possibility of confusion because the action of “waving” as done by a human is very different to the action of “waving” as done by a flag – people don’t think this consciously, it’s just the way language works. It’s a syntax-error-that-isn’t-actually-a-syntax-error.“Waving” of course is from the verb “to wave” so called because it resembles the up-down or back-forth cycling action of a wave. The word “wave” being used in the sense of “sine wave” or “electro-magnetic wave” because that cycling is reminiscent of the action displayed by an ocean wave. Which is odd, because waves, as in waves on the sea, they don’t wave. We never say “the sea is waving”. We only say “the sea is wavy”.English is weird.
We never say “the sea is waving”. We only say “the sea is wavy”.If I may offer my counterpoint by citing the classic text “1000 Hot Zingers for Krazy Kidz”:
What did the sea say say to the shore? ˙pǝʌɐʍ ʇsnɾ ʇᴉ ‘ƃuᴉɥʇoN
I’ve never heard anyone refer to a body of water as waving or wavy. “The waves are big”, I’ve heard.
I’ve never heard anyone refer to a body of water as waving or wavy. “The waves are big”, I’ve heard.
But dresses don’t sway. They may wave in the wind and they may wave when the wearer sways, but they don’t sway. That’s stupid.
Not only that, but in common parlance, “sway” is a side to side motion that’s typically associated with dancing or fixed objects like buildings or trees. “Wave” fits much better in common use with the oscillating movement of cloth, as you point out.Now you could argue that Mary is dancing on the porch, so she and her dress could both be swaying. But the first line of the couplet describes Mary stepping outside, and it makes more sense that Mary’s dress would be waving (on the breeze, for example) before it starts swaying. The word “wave” actually pulls double meaning in that context, since Mary herself could be waving hello, but her dress waving hello is more evocative. More to the point, Springsteen clearly says “waves” on the record (he might or might not say “sways” on the Live 75-85 compilation). And the article’s assertion that “sways” rhymes with “plays” simply ignores the existence of slant rhyme, which is ridiculous.
It always sounded like waves to me, and the fact that it didn’t quite rhyme with plays never bothered me, no more than him rhyming again with again in the same verse. Come on, it’s just anaphora.
Given all the other wonky rhymes in the song [Hold/Road; Seat/Free; Dawn/On; Wind/In] arguing “sways” must be correct isn’t a very convincing argument. Similarly, arguing “sways” must be correct because of the literal definitions of it vs. “waves” only works if you ignore all the other examples of non-literal lyrics in the song. (Nights can’t actually bust open, after all, guitar’s cannot talk, and the narrator isn’t suggesting there are actual ghost-eyed boys screaming “Maaaaaaarrrrryyyy!!!!” on the street.)
Getting linguistically pedantic about Springsteen lyrics is silly. This is a guy who wrote that a former baseball player “could throw that speedball.”
This is exactly why the Flag Code prohibits wearing Old Glory as clothing. Flags gotta wave, dresses gotta sway.
wave (wāv)v. waved, wav·ing, wavesv.intr.1. To move freely back and forth or up and down in the air, as branches in the wind.
I’m sure there’s people that will still tell him that he’s wrong, and it’s ‘waves’ anyway. Y’know, cuz they know better than the guy that wrote it. Like the Simpsons ‘car hole’ vs ‘car hold’, where the writers even said it’s ‘car hole’ and the internet nerds told them that, ‘No, despite the fact they wrote it, they are incorrect. It is ‘car hold.’’
I never heard that debate before this comments section. Of course it’s car hole. It’s best for the joke. The idea that dresses don’t wave or that they sway is also stupid.
Also, he very clearly says “hole”. Like… you can argue with the writers if you must but why argue with your own ears?
I don’t disagree with you. Some people suck.
what are literally all the lyrics in “Born In The U.S.A.” other than the chorus?
Conservatives: “there’s other lyrics?”
At first I thought this was going to be about the lyrics to Racing in the Street. Where he has fuelie heads on a 396 chevy (they were on some of the small blocks but not the big block engines). More trivia.
when you don’t pronounce anything, all words rhyme.
I was hoping he changed “Tunnel of Love” to “Vagina”.
It’s where he parks his pink Cadillac, if you know what I mean.
I’ll always prefer his lyrics on “Asbury Park”Blinded by a Sprite(tm)
That goose dropped a deuce
And went home sober in the light
“Waves” is a near rhyme with “plays” and would be a perfectly acceptable choice, compositionally. Also, a dress, like any fabric, can certainly wave in the breeze.Regardless, Melissa knows the words, in one of my favorite versions. Bit of nostalgia for my fellow olds.
If you mumble a bit -which Springsteen does – then “waves” and “plays” rhyme perfectly.
I had someone once tell me, in all seriousness, that Springsteen was the Donald Trump of rock. I dunno if he didn’t know anything about Springsteen, Trump, or both.
You would have been within your rights to have murdered him on the spot.
You’re talking about Trump, right?
Kill them both; let the Boss sort it out.
This is the way.
Do it on Fifth Avenue, just for the irony.
I’ve been waiting decades for him to fix “Racing in the Street”…. from Darkness on the Edge of Town.“I’ve got a 69 Chevy with a 396, fuelie heads, and a Hurst on the floor…”What? … Fuelie heads are small block chevy stuff, can’t put those on a big block! Bruce was hanging around, listening to guys BS about cars and wrote a song.I was a big fan until that moment.It is only in the past 15 years that I let it go, and sort of forgiven him. I do find him an interesting guy to listen to in interviews. Some of his newest songs are quite good.
But we’re going to just ignore “Blinded by the Light?”
Listen buddy, what part of “wrapped up like a douche” don’t you understand?
In the Springsteen version, it’s “cut loose like a deuce” and it’s the best-enunciated line in the song. You can thank Manfred Mann’s Earth Band for odes to wrapping up douches.
“People sometimes get obsessed with things that are, oh, let’s say stupid or meaningless or completely incorrect,”
you guessed it…The AV Fucking Club!
I get the confusion. The ear doesn’t really pick up the separation of S sounds between “dress” and “sways” so “dressways” becomes “dress waves.”
Slow entertainment news week, hmm?
This article is incredibly white.
rappers love Phil Collins, would a “sussudio” quibble not be incredibly white?
people say that about literally fucking anything these days huh
The only thing I know about the song Thunder Road is that the kids name their spaceship after it in the movie Explorers.
Huh! I always heard it as “waves,” figuring Bruce was intentionally comparing the dress to the American flag as sort of an Americana thing.
but clearly waves can’t wave, we’ve all been on the wrong wavelength
I’m going to waive my right to object to your wordplay.
On Life of Pablo, ye told us that “waves don’t die”
but I think it would have had more weight coming from Frank Ocean
what are literally all the lyrics in “Born In The U.S.A.” other than the chorus? That seems like a fun song about how great America is, but we just want to double-check.
Let’s not let this “controversy” (or whatever it is) distract from the fact that Thunder Road is one of the all-time great album openers. Love the piano, Bruce sings beautifully, and love that moment where it all explodes into “Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair…”
I find most people who don’t like or don’t know Springsteen like this song.
My one time seeing him live – he came out at the end on his own to play it with guitar and harmonica, and it was just beautiful.
It does a great job kicking of Hammersmith Odeon ’75 as well.
Now he just needs to change the lyric in Glory Days from “speedball” to “fastball.” A fastball is a baseball pitch; a speedball is a mixture of cocaine and heroin.
Yes! That annoys me every time I hear it.
“Speedball” was used as an alternate form of “fastball” at one time, but basically never, today. Most likely because of the confusion with the drugs.
The song came out in the mid 80s, it’s about guys in their 20s remembering high school, and I’m more than happy to believe that high schoolers in the mid 70s were pelting each other with heroin and cocaine.
I’m a lifelong Springsteen fan, and have long known this. I’ve also long known, though, that Springsteen sings “sways” every time he sings it. I haven’t exactly lost sleep over it.
Hey snicker all you want but I knew a guy who thought the song was actually called “The Under Road”
As usual, Steve van Zandt had the correct opinion when he said this was all stupid nonsense propagated by Twitter yobs.
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Apologies to Bruce but the lyric is more interesting as a slant rhyme.
What the fuck? Dresses can certainly “wave”.
I always heard it as waves.
Do loads of people under 50 listen to his music voluntarily?
Waves makes much more sense you clowns. A dress can wave like a flag can wave. A dress does not sway. People sway. “Sway” is the better rhyme, but it is more fanciful.
So, next they will be saying that Desmond Dekker didn’t have baked beans for breakfast, and his ears weren’t alight