Bruce’s lyrics are laced with double entrendres: One could easily and perhaps correctly assume that our characters are street musicians, hangers-on, and partiers, locked in some street rave cum gang skirmish like an early “Jungleland.” In Songs, Bruce describes these characters as “partly imagined, partly real… vaguely from Asbury Park at the turn of the decade.” (E Street itself is in nearby Belmar, the address of Sancious, the song’s MVP.) The E Street shuffle is “a dance with no exact steps… just the dance you did every day and every night to get by.”īut in the second verse, the scene gets a bit seedier.
Well, the kids down there either dancin’ or hooked up in a scuffleĭressed in snakeskin suits packed with Detroit muscle Them teenage tramps in skin-tight pants do the E Street dance and everything’s all right Them schoolboy pops pull out all the stops on a Friday night Sparks fly on E Street when the boy prophets walk it handsome and hotĪll the little girls’ souls grow weak when the man-child gives them a double shot The whole song is just one big stage-setting exercise–the very last lines imply the story is about to start, and then the song turns into a raging party that eventually just fades out. Regardless, once we adjust to Bruce’s lyrical verbosity, we realize: nothing happens in “The E Street Shuffle.” Like absolutely nothing. Even more than in “Blinded by the Light,” I find myself occasionally questioning whether Bruce was really the pharmacological straight-edge he’s always claimed he was. It’s hard to even say some of Bruce’s lines, let alone sing them.Īnd yet somehow, Bruce manages to turn a word salad into a sandwich, pulling off some clever internal rhyming in the process.
E street shuffle lyrics meaning full#
There’s absolutely no reason why lyrics like “those E Street brats in twilight duel flashlight phantoms in full star stream” should fit any melody or meter. Still, it works perfectly as a lead-in to “The E Street Shuffle” because it telegraphs that something symphonic is on the way only to completely subvert expectations moments later.)Įvery time I listen to “The E Street Shuffle,” I shake my head. The fact that it was recorded completely separately only bolsters my opinion. (Side note: I’ve always considered the orchestra tune-up introduction to be separate from the song itself, serving more as an introduction for the album than its semi-title track. “The E Street Shuffle” may not represent Bruce’s typical sound, but it certainly introduces key elements of it. Years before “ Sherry Darling,” Bruce and the band add their simulated street chatter like a cacophonous Greek chorus. Bruce’s guitar-playing matches Sancious’ clavinet funk for funk the very first E Street horn section (with guest artist Albee Tellone) carries the riff Richard Blackwell adds some Latin percussion Bruce even plays a recorder. Bruce’s third album carries a sense of confidence, desperation and focus, but his second is loose, fun, eclectic, and at times breathtakingly daring. Besides introducing more obvious homages to his musical influences, “The E Street Shuffle” establishes an adventurous, go-for-broke yet what-the-hell attitude that you can only do on your second album (especially when your first one has only been out a few months).īy the time Bruce and the band started recording Born to Run, the pressure was high and mounting. Bruce is clearly making a statement in the opening track of his second album.
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