Read Online Walk like a Man by Robert J. Wiersema - Free Book Online

Street”), but because of a hook-laden, synth-based, dance-friendly single written with the sole intention of producing a hit.
    Late in the sessions for Born in the U.S.A., Springsteen was harangued by manager and producer Jon Landau, who, upon examining the album’s projected running order, discerned the absence of a breakout single. Springsteen initially resisted, but within a couple of days had delivered the final track, the song that would make him a household name around the world.
    The success of “ Dancing in the Dark ” was fostered not only by its radio-friendliness, but also by the winning rock video directed by Brian De Palma and the seven- and twelve-inch dance remixes that earned the song heavy rotation in clubs over the summer of 1984.
    As Springsteen’s popularity picked up steam, new singles followed, including “Born in the U.S.A.,” “Glory Days,” “I’m On Fire,” and “My Hometown.” Eventually, seven of the album’s twelve songs were released as singles, all of them reaching the Billboard Top Ten. 1 “Dancing in the Dark” was the big one, though.
    It’s the song that changed everything.
    It’s the Springsteen song that everyone knows.
    Despite this, it’s pretty clear to me that not many people have actually listened to the words.
    â€œDancing in the Dark” is one of the poppiest, most radio-friendly, danceable and saccharine-sounding tracks you’ll ever hear. But lyrically, it’s one of the bleakest, most unrelenting songs in the Springsteen catalogue. The characters he created for the Darkness on the Edge of Town album—hell, even the narrator of “Point Blank”—have nothing on the sheer, existential dread that is “Dancing in the Dark.” 2
    Take out the liner notes—or visit brucespringsteen.net—and read the lyrics. Now, read them again.
    Stripped of its poppy veneer, “Dancing in the Dark” is the sound of a soul in torment, a man dragging himself through life without passion, lacking any “spark” to “start a fire” that’s long gone out. If it ever existed.
    He lives in a dump, and he’s getting nowhere; he wants to change everything about himself, but he’s utterly helpless. As the song progresses, the tension mounts. He’s looking for love, but more than that, he’s looking for even a single person to glance his way, to assure him that he still actually exists. And there’s no respite, no last-verse cry of defiance, just his growing desperation as he becomes more and more numb to everything in the world.
    Springsteen has attempted, to little effect, to reclaim some of the inherent darkness of “Dancing in the Dark” over the last two decades. An acoustic version performed occasionally on the 1992– 93 tour highlighted the words, but it didn’t really work as a song. The hard-rocking, guitar-driven version of recent tours is a welcome relief from the twee synthesizers, but the musical treatment lends the song an air of defiance unsupported by the words.
    The song is harrowing, and hearing it done this way casts a new light on the album as a whole. Born in the U.S.A., for all its chart-topping, trend-setting popularity, is almost uniformly bleak, from the traumatized veteran in the title song to the spurned lover in “I’m Goin’ Down,” from the aching loss of “ Bobby Jean ” to the desperate search for a lover not for passion but for protection in “Cover Me,” from the good-times-turned-bad of “Darlington County” and “Working on the Highway,” to the passionate, nay, psychotic desire of “ I’m On Fire .”
    â€œDancing in the Dark” reaches in to the listener, direct and unadorned. Springsteen’s use of the first person in the verses establishes an intimacy, while the almost accusatory “you” in the chorus lends the song an