Tag: The Promise

Love, Sex, Death, and Springsteen’s “Sha La La”

Sha la la Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen remains one of the great living artists who connects us to early rock and roll. Perhaps as part of that connection, he is the artist most likely to sing the classic rock lyrics “sha-la-la.” The lyrics have appeared in several of his performances and recordings.

“Brown-Eyed Girl” Cover

In one example from a recent tour, Springsteen sang the line while covering Van Morrison’s classic “Brown-Eyed Girl” on April 19, 2014 in Charlotte, North Carolina: “Do you remember when we used to sing / Sha la la la la la la la la la la dee dah.”

“Darlington County” and “Jersey Girl”

The two “sha-la-la” songs most identified with Springsteen, though, are “Darlington County” and “Jersey Girl.” “Darlington County” first appeared on Born in the U.S.A. (1984), recounting the travels of the singer and “Wayne” heading down South from New York City to meet some girls. “We got rock and roll music blasting off the T-top singing / Sha la la la la la la la la.”

Below is a swinging performance of “Darlington County” in London in 2013. Although the original version highlighted Springsteen’s harmonies with Steven Van Zandt, when the band plays live, everyone sings on the “sha-la-la’s.”

Although California-born Tom Waits wrote “Jersey Girl,” fans also identify Springsteen with the song from his many performances and from his close connection to New Jersey. Springsteen began performing the song during The River tour in 1981, and it appeared as a B-side to Born in the U.S.A.‘s “Cover Me.” “Jersey Girl” finally appeared on an official Springsteen album when a live version closed the box set Live: 1975-85 (1986).

In “Jersey Girl,” the singer tells us he is in love with a girl from New Jersey. It is a touching song, tinged with real-life hope and regret. The singer pleads with a single mother who is exhausted from her job, asking that she go dancing on a Saturday night where everything will be all right.

And then, apparently, they will “Sha-la-la. . .” because the singer is “in love with a Jersey girl.” As in “Brown-Eyed Girl,” one might read the “Sha-la-la’s” as rock and roll talk for sexual relations. Below is an October 2009 performance at Giants Stadium . . . in New Jersey, of course.

“Breakaway”

Springsteen used “sha-la-la” in at least one other original song besides “Darlington County.” The phrase appearing in background vocals for his song “Breakaway.”

“Breakaway” was recorded during Springsteen’s 1977-’78 recording sessions around the time of Darkness on the Edge of Town.  But these sha-la-la’s did not see official release until Springsteen put together leftover songs from those sessions for the 2010 release The Promise.

Unlike the other sha-la-la’s in other songs in this post, the sha-la-la’s in “Breakaway” appear in the background, not up front in a chorus. Also, “Breakaway” is one of the rare times where “sha-la-la” does not have any sexual or love connotations.

In “Breakaway,” the “sha-la-la” phrase fills in the spaces in a song about broken dreams. Arguably, the phrase fills in for another topic we do not like to talk about: death. “Janie slid into a car last night (sha la la la, sha la la la) / In a parking lot she gave her soul away . . . .”

“Jole Blon”

On a much happier note, one of my favorite “sha-la-la” songs resulted when Springsteen joined Gary U.S. Bonds on a modern version of the Cajun classic “Jole Blon” on Bonds’s 1981 album Dedication. Among other things, Springsteen contributed some “sha la la’s.”

Here is a 2012 performance where the two men teamed up on stage at Metlife Stadium in New Jersey singing a great duet on “Jole Blon” from an excellent album. Again, it is a love song and the “sha-la-la’s” help fill in the blanks.

“Sha La La”

Finally, if “sha-la-la” is good enough for a chorus, it is good enough for a name of a song. In 1964, The Shirelles recorded a song called “Sha La La” that may have given Springsteen his first love of the “sha-la-la” phrase, even though a more famous song by The Shirelles, “Baby It’s You,” also used the phrase.

Springsteen recently performed The Shirelles’ “Sha La La” in 2009 during the Working on a Dream tour.  But prior to that, all of his other known performances of the song occurred in 1975.

Below is a live version of “Sha La La” Springsteen sang by request in 2009. Again, you can figure out what “sha-la-la” means: “When I kissed you and I held you tight / Baby, you made me feel alright / So this is the song that I sang all night / Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la.”

What Sha-la-la Song Should Springsteen Sing Next?

With these six songs, four of which appear on official recordings, Bruce Springsteen may be the living artist most likely to “sha-la-la” in song. It has been awhile, though, since he has recorded a “sha-la-la” song. Let us suggest “Let’s Live for Today” (“Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today”) by the Grass Roots, which Springsteen apparently is yet to sing. Maybe it is time for another new sha-la-la.

Is there a “sha-la-la” Springsteen song we missed? What is your favorite Springsteen “sha-la-la”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    What Song Would Springsteen Want His Children to Know?

    When Bruce Springsteen was asked which of his songs featured a character he would want his children to understand, he replied with “Racing in the Street.”

    55 Chevy

    In early 2011, VH-1 Classic broadcast a program, Bruce Springsteen: a Conversation with his Fans. The program — which promoted Bruce Springsteen’s release of the Darkness on the Edge of Town box set, including the new album, The Promise — featured fans asking Springsteen questions. The fans were chosen in advance based on their questions, and many of the questions were very good.

    My favorite question was quite thoughtful. One woman asked Springsteen which character from the songs on the set would he “most want his children to understand.” It was a great question, requiring him to reflect about his life and the meaning behind his songs. He responded that “‘Racing in the Street’ sums up a lot for me.” He explained that he would like his children to be “untouched by that particular sadness, but that’s not the way the world works.”

    Noting that the song “Racing in the Street” is still very emotional for him, Springsteen added that he would want for them to “have that understanding [conveyed in the song] without the pain, but that is not possible.” So, he would like for his kids to “have the resilience . . . to be able to navigate their way through that kind of pain because that is what we all have to do.”

    It was an insightful statement about a beautiful song. “Racing in the Street” is one of the saddest songs written by someone who writes a lot of sad songs. If you go back through his catalog during the first fifteen years of his career, it would be impossible to find more than a few songs that are not touched by some type of sadness.

    The Pain in “Racing in the Street”

    What is “that particular sadness” in “Racing in the Street”? The song is narrated by a young man who makes money by racing his ’69 Chevy for money by riding from town-to-town with his friend Sonny (“We only run for the money, got no strings attached/We shut ’em up and then we shut ’em down”). The guy does not die in a crash, and he even gets the girl in the end. So why is the song sad?

    There are two reasons the song is sad. First, the lyrics reveal that the song is not a James Dean fantasy. They recognize the pain of real life and the existential struggle to just survive in the face of so much bleakness in the world.

    Some guys they just give up living
    And start dying little by little, piece by piece,
    Some guys come home from work and wash up,
    And go racing in the street.

    Although the hero won the girl by blowing away a Camaro driven by “some dude from L.A.,” that one happy moment happened three years ago. You do not get such heroic moments every day of your life. So, in the present, the man and the woman both live with the pain and consequences of day-to-day life.

    But now there’s wrinkles around my baby’s eyes
    And she cries herself to sleep at night
    . . .
    She sits on the porch of her Daddy’s house
    But all her pretty dreams are torn,
    She stares off alone into the night
    With the eyes of one who hates for just being born

    The other big reason the song is so sad is Roy Bittan’s piano. Even if the song had no lyrics, Bittan’s piano playing on “Racing in the Street” would still convey that “particular real world sadness” that Springsteen mentioned in response to the fan’s question. Throughout the song, the piano’s relentless rhythm, sometimes accompanied by a metronome drum sound, echoes the continuous steps the hero must take to just live through each day in a world where there are not victorious car races every moment.

    The lyrics end with a little hope, as Springsteen sings, “Tonight my baby and me, we’re gonna ride to the sea/And wash these sins off our hands.” After his voice fades, Bittan’s piano continues its rhythm, also offering some hope by echoing existential angry defiance in the face of hopelessness.

    As the Boss wished for his children, in your life too, may you have the resilience to find your way through that kind of pain.

    Bonus “Racing in the Street”: The video above is a live performance from 1978 in Houston. “Racing in the Street” appeared on the original Darkness on the Edge of Town album, but Springsteen included an alternate version of the song, entitled “Racing in the Street (78),” on the new The Promise album. This Promise version, which had been around on Bootlegs through the years, features a full band sound throughout most of the song. The music focuses on the anger and resistance part of the song, and for much of the song the rock sound is inconsistent with the lyrics. The band sounds great, but the band version lacks the focus of Roy Bittan’s piano in the original. Although I enjoy this other version, Springsteen made the correct choice in the 1970s to put the quieter piano version Darkness on the Edge of Town.

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    The Promise

    Bruce Springsteen The Promise Today is the release date for Bruce Springsteen’s “new” CD/DVD set, The Promise.  The songs on the two-CD set mostly were recorded during sessions after 1975’s Born to Run and before 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town. But ultimately they were left off the latter album.  It’s interesting that the DVD documentary and the album are named after the song “The Promise,” a song never given a proper release and long one of my favorite songs.

    There are many songs about broken hearts, but there are not many great songs that are about broken dreams like “The Promise.”  A testament to the power of this song is the fact that in the new documentary, Springsteen said that he did not release the song in 1978 because he was “too close” to it.

    Many have speculated about what the song specifically means to Springsteen, tying it to his situation of being embroiled in a lawsuit with his former manager Mike Appel over control and ownership of his songs.    But like most songs that come out of a strong personal meaning for the songwriter, this one has universal themes that touch people unconnected to its origins.

    In 1998, Springsteen released Tracks, a 4-CD set of unreleased songs from throughout his career.  He miscalculated how much his fans had grown to love “The Promise” through years of bootlegging, and fans complained that the song was left off the set.  He remedied the situation by adding the song to a single CD Best of Tracks collection, making fans happy for the song but not happy to have to buy the Best of CD for a couple of bonus songs when they had already purchased the 4-CD set.  At the time, he said he did not release “The Promise” on Tracks because he was not satisfied with the versions in the vaults, so he recorded a new version with him alone at a piano for the Best of CD.

    I loved the piano version of “The Promise” that he released on Best of Tracks, and with the Internet now I’ve heard several versions of the song.  I first heard the song as a bootleg on a record album in the early 1980’s, and it immediately became one of my favorite songs.  In that version, it featured the full band.  So I have a fondness for the full band versions of the song.

    The song is about people with dreams — and in particular a person who travels to participate in car races in his car, “Challenger” — and what happens after the dreams are broken.  I like the line about how even when you win, you still feel like you carry something from those you defeated.

    I won big once and I hit the coast,
    But somehow I paid the big cost;
    Inside I felt like I was carryin’ the broken spirits
    Of all the other ones who lost.

    When the promise is broken you go on living,
    But it steals something from down in your soul;
    Like when the truth is spoken and it don’t make no difference,
    Something in your heart goes cold.

    The song has several references to “Thunder Road.” The name “Thunder Road” ertainly had various meanings for Springsteen after a song by that name appeared on his previous album and had created such high expectations and pressure for the upcoming album.

    In the different versions of “The Promise” I’ve heard, Springsteen sometimes places different emphasis on the final lines about the narrator and Billy saying they were going to “take it all and throw it all away.”  Sometimes he sings with resignation and despair, sometimes he sings with hopeless defiance.  But that’s one of the signs of a great song and a great singer, that they can convey different meanings and emotions with the same material.

    I’m glad that this song never got thrown away.

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