#which idk why b/c i told him from the beginning i'm not looking for a relationship & he agreed to just casual fwb

[you-can-face-this]

thinking about how my situationship that i ended & was supposed to be friends with asked if we could still cuddle sometimes and promised he wouldn’t ask for more & that he’d give me 15% equity of his startup if he broke the promise asdfja;sdfjka;sd and at first i was offended he’d be so quick to throw away our friendship but also? 

[janiedean]

Man, you have no idea how much I hate you. I hate you so much that I’m going to force you to choose between THREE songs to analyze. “Shut out the Light”, “Gypsy Biker” and “The Promise”. I’d wish you best of luck, but I so highly dislike you, that I wouldn’t DARE to offer you such a kindness. (Also, I'm just not sure if you've analyzed any of those yet so I'm covering my bases.)

HELLO ANON THIS IS AN OLD ASK BUT SPRINGSTEEN DAY IS COMING and therefore I’m going with my favorite out of the two I had left (I’ll do the other one asap tho!

*DRUM ROLL*

So: The Promise is one of those mythical songs from Bruce’s vault, in the sense that it’s from the late seventies and everyone knew it existed to the point that it was supposed to be the title-song instead of Darkness on that record but instead he never properly published it because it was too personal and he could never find the right version, which is why there’s like fifteen different takes of it in between the one on tracks, the one on the promise boxset with all the darkness outtakes, the ten live versions and so on - basically he was reworking it for literal years. So I’m just going with my favorite version - I mean I love them all but this one to me is.. just… IT SPEAKS TO ME MORE THAN THE OTHERS? idk but I love this one above all others ;_; (I think I like that it starts slow and goes into full band while the others tend to go either all band all piano idk)

Now, context: in order to get what’s behind this, you need to know that post-Born to Run he ended up in a trial with his former manager of his first two records out of contractual reasons (tldr: the contract he signed at the beginning was shitty and the manager didn’t want to settle for new conditions he found more favorable/fair) that lasted two years and during which he couldn’t publish anything because in the contractual drama there were also song rights involved. So: it was not the best time of his life and he felt it as a betrayal of sorts since he was actually close to the guy and considered him a friend.

With that said, let’s go at it:

Johnny works in a factory and Billy works downtownTerry works in a rock and roll band looking for that million-dollar soundMe sometimes I don’t do nothing, some spend a lot of time aloneSome nights I go to the drive-in and some nights I stay home

Now: the two people in the first line are probably imaginary and they’re there to establish a situation, in the sense that factory and downtown are two types of job that he could have had and his friends could have had, while the third one is relevant to our discussion because he works in a rnr band looking for that million-dollar sound, which is what *he* was doing up until he actually published Born to Run and hit it.

And then, he doesn’t do nothing, spends time alone etc., which is (according to his autobiography too) what he was doing when he couldn’t write or record music thanks to the trial and when he was starting to hit a fairly bad phase in his life. So: he’s basically staying on his own with his thoughts. Not good.

Now: he goes to the drive-in.

I followed that dream just like those guys do way up on the screenRode down the Challenger down Route 9 trough the dead ends and all the bad sceneWhen the promise was broken, I cashed in a few of my own dreams

Key elements we have here: dreams and cars.

Now: follow that dream is the title of another seminal mythical Springsteen bootleg which also sums up a lot of his philosophy, and it’s in a few other songs of his, but in this case: he followed that dream the way people did in the movies, meaning, making music, but that can also apply to anyone trying to make their way through life following some dream they have.

Now: the Challenger is a car which is one of his most basic metaphors, and in this case he rides it ‘through dead ends and bad scenes’, but it’s kind of obvious that it’s about his music, not a car, which he brought through dead ends and bad scenes meaning all the false starts he had until he could actually publish his records.

And then the promise was broken and he cashed in a few of his dreams, meaning that when the legal drama started, he saw it as a broken promise which eventually ended up having to sell his music ie his dreams, which was not what he was hoping for when he went into the business. Actually:

Well now I built that Challenger by myself, but I needed money and so I sold itAnd I lived a secret I should’ve kept to myself, but I got drunk one night and I told itAll my life I fought the fight, the one that no man can ever winEvery day it just gets harder to live the dream I’m believing inThunder Road, here one ride in the morning till it turns lightThunder Road, there’s something dying out on the highway tonight

‘I built that Challenger by myself’ = I wrote that music by myself obviously, and ‘I needed money and so I sold it’ = ‘I signed a bad contract also to survive and bring it to the people’, but that goes into the main narrative of the *fictional character* he’s singing about who has built that car and then sold it. But what’s the real deal in this is the middle section ie I fought the fight no man can ever win + it gets harder to live the dream I’m believing in, as in, we’re back to the main themes of the album consisting in how following your dream doesn’t necessarily means getting what you want nor the end of your problems/fights (the fight that no man can ever win) and living in it can turn into a nightmare (because it gets harder).

Now: the Thunder road part in the refrain has another double meaning because it’s, again, both the title of one of his most iconic songs and the title of a noir movie (remember: he goes to the drive in and wants to live his dreams like people on a screen from before), and we have a) one ride in the morning until the light comes (hopeful imagery), b) something dying on the highway tonight (negative imagery), so that dream he achieved - or anyone else - can either end up hopeful or wrong and it can even be both at the same time, or maybe you can hope it goes well while in truth it’s wrong. Who knows. IT’S UP TO THE INTERPRETER.

Well now I won big once and I hit the coast, oh but somehow I paid that big costI feel like I was carrying the broken spirits of all the other ones who lostWhen the promise is broken you can go on living, but, man, it steals something from down in your soulLike when the truth is spoken, but it don’t make no difference, something in your heart grows coldWell I followed that dream in the southwestern flats to the dead ends and a two-bit barsWhen the promise was broken I was far away from home sleeping in the backseat of a borrowed car

And now we’re at the big guns.

‘I won big once and I hit the coast’: general enough that you can see yourself in it if it happened to you, but if you know the backstory you know it’s about him finally getting to publish his music and somehow paying that big cost anyway (count that in between that, the previous contractual conditions and having to pay off contracts and so on he was half-broke at least until the River tour);

‘the broken spirits of all the other ones who lost’: he feels like even if he won or partially won, he’s still feeling a kinship with anyone else who went through the same situation;

‘you go on living but it steals something down in your soul’: whenever someone breaks your trust in such a bad way when you were intimate friends or partners or whatever even if you go on it breaks something in you that might never change back and it’s actually… a very… universal thing I mean it’s true that if you get betrayed by someone you’re close to it’s usually a bad blow, which goes hand in hand with the ‘something in your heart goes cold’ the moment someone tells you the truth and for you it changes nothing when it should;

the final line is more his fictional character than him, but it lines up with the rest because we have again following a dream through dead ends and he sleeps in the seat of a borrowed car, because he sold the one he made with his own hands and so the breaking of that promise goes with having to sleep somewhere that’s not his and that he can’t relate to and that he feels like has been stolen from him - and he’s also far away from home ie in the place he should feel safest/more at ease.

And:

Thunder Road, here’s one for the lost lovers and all the fixed gamesThunder Road, here’s one for the tires rushing by in the rainThunder Road, remember me and Terry what we’d sayThunder Road, we’re gonna take it all and throw it all away

We’re back at the Thunder Road refrain, where it stands for: a) lost lovers/fixed games ie all the relationships he lost and all the *games* that he hadn’t thought existed before going into the business, b) tires rushing by in the rain ie an image of someone running away in a car under the rain which is not exactly a good omen but still is about getting out of a situation you don’t like, c) something he and the friend in the band used to say, which is d) we’re taking it all and throwing it all away which is the exact same idea as the it’s a town full of losers and we’re pulling out of here to win of Thunder Road’s ending, except that TR’s is optimistic, this one is more ‘we said we would do it and then look at how we ended up’. It’s probably interesting to note that Terry is also the name of the friend in Backstreets with whom the protagonist has a falling out thanks to a supposed betrayal:

Blame it on the lies that killed us Blame it on the truth that ran us down You can blame it all on me Terry It don’t matter to me now When the breakdown hit at midnight There was nothing left to say But I hated him And I hated you when you went away Laying here in the dark You’re like an angel on my chest Just another tramp of hearts Crying tears of faithlessness Remember all the movies, Terry We’d go see Trying to learn to walk like the heroes We thought we had to be Well after all this time To find we’re just like all the rest Stranded in the park And forced to confess To hiding on the backstreets

I mean, coincidences? We just don’t know, but I DON’T THINK IT’S 100% A COINCIDENCE that the name is similar and that this is the guy who gets mentioned again at least here rather than the other two. Anyway that’s me doing speculation lmao.

Anyway: this song had endless versions and it only ever was published two decades after the fact because it was Too Personal and he couldn’t find the proper, but even if it’s really personal it still manages to be relatable thanks to those key passages in stanzas 2 and 3 (the fight that no man can ever win/when the promise is broken it steals something from down in your soul) and while I don’t know if it’s The Best Springsteen song as a lot of people rightfully think (BECAUSE IT’S A FUCKING GREAT SONG) it’s definitely one of the most intimate, raw and beautiful Springsteen songs exactly for how his experiences are made relatable to everyone else in a way that’s imo heartwrenching and bye I love this and I love all of the other versions and BRUCE IS GREAT OKAY? okay. ;__;