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Bruce Springsteen has said he relied heavily on a rhyming dictionary when he was writing it.
The result is 6 or 7 minutes of amusing but totally nonsensical rhymes that are fun to sing along with just for the hell of it, like this:
Some brimstone baritone anticyclone rolling stone preacher from the east
Says, "Dethrone the dictaphone, hit it in its funny bone, that's where they expect it least"
Or this:
Now Scott with a slingshot finially found a tender spot and throws his lover in the sand
And some bloodshot forget-me-not said daddy's within earshot save the buckshot, turn up the band
Or this:
And go-kart Mozart was checkin' out the weather chart to see if it was safe outside
And little Early-Pearly came by in his curly-wurly and asked me if I needed a ride
And hell, it's a goldmine for mondegreens, too. "Wrapped up like a douche", anyone?
Comments
I dunno, it seems pretty straightforward to me.
(Also the lines are far from nonsensical, what are you talking about, they just happen to have a lot of inter-rhyme)
Gee, I thought you were talking about the cover by Manfred Man and the Earth Band.
I guess. But it's the Boss, so I can forgive him.
Yep. And either way, singing along with it is quite entertaining.
I just find it funny that the Manfred Man cover is more well known.
I thought this would be about the (completely and totally awesome) Final Fantasy XIII battle theme.
Which version?
Hearing the name of this song annoys me, because I keep hearing a few lines from a song that I can't find , that sounds nothing like any version of the song that I can see
My dad refuses to listen to the Manfred Mann version when it turns up on the radio, which is more often than the original. And it really does sound like he's saying "douche"...no wonder everyone I know except my dad and I, including my mom, thinks that's what the lyric is!
I haven't even heard the original recently. This is unfortunate. And also, in response to the actual content of the OP...I never really absorbed the lyrics of the verses. And I think I now realize why. I only would be likely to hear the song in any form on the radio in the car with my dad, and it seems like every station always played the cover, and as I said, my dad would refuse to listen to it. So as previously said, I almost never heard the song, period! But since the lyrics are nonsensical anyways, I would have had trouble remembering them.
Someone liked "Go-Kart Mozart" so much they named their band after it. And I am another one who only knows the Manfred Mann version. I had forgotten that Springsteen wrote it.
The original
The Manfred Mann cover
I still prefer the Manfred Mann version, although it's far too long (it was, like, the 70s, man...). Springsteen makes it sound like a weak imitation of one of Bob Dylan's epic "Lordy, I'm being all poetic and enigmatic" songs.
Other covers that are better than the originals, IMHO - Jimi Hendrix's version of "All Along The Watchtower" and Bryan Ferry's version of "Hard Rain". Not coincidentally, both Dylan again. Great songs, but often not a great singer (or harmonica player).
Yeah, I do prefer the Manfred Mann cover too. It's the one I grew up with. I had no idea it was a Springsteen song until I read this thread.
The "douche" is so easy to hear in the lyrics that I heard it without trying as a child, because I did not know the word douche until my teens (it didn't become a widespread insult until the very late 90's)
I've not noticed that possibility until now, but then "douche" still isn't widely used in British English anyway. I always thought it was "deuce."
I still don't really know what a "deuce" is, other than a substitute swear-word in the expression, "what the deuce!"
According to the lyric sheets I've seen it's "deuce" as in a card. As 70's songs go it's a lot better than Muskrat Love.
Or, indeed, Radar Love. You get that on a lot of classic rock compilations/stations and I find it boring as hell. Perhaps fortunately, I've never actually heard Muskrat Love.
I think deuce is a car reference. Let's see...yup. It's a car, a Ford hot rod. How exactly do we post links here anymore? Because I've got one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_B_(1932)#Deuce_coupe
The original Springsteen lyric was "Cut loose like a deuce", the Manfred Mann one was "Revved up like a deuce", both make sense to me in context, though the former generates an image of a car speeding along while the other just makes me think of revving the engine while stopped.
(Huh, the whole link doesn't turn...linky...)