Personal stories of Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark for BBC Radio 4’s Soul Music.
"Dancing in the Dark was written under duress!" Bruce Springsteen tells us. "I had no interest, whatsoever, in writing any more. I had been killing myself for a year and half or two years just to write what we had, much less trying to write another song! All I could do was write another song about not wanting to write another song".
"I get up in the evening / And I ain't got nothing to say" - By 1984, Bruce Springsteen had been recording songs for his album Born in the U.S.A. for two years. He felt the album was finished, but producer Jon Landau told Springsteen that the album still didn't have a lead single. "I've written 70 songs for this album," Bruce responded. "You want another one, you can write it yourself." Two nights later, back in the hotel after a recording session, Bruce sat on the bed with an acoustic guitar and played Jon Dancing in the Dark - he'd written the song in just 40 minutes. They went into the studio the next night with the E Street Band and cut the song in just a few takes: "When you have a great song sometimes they can be the easiest to record," Jon tells us.
"I ain't nothing but tired / Man, I'm just tired and bored with myself" - Kieran Leonard's mum was a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. He remembers her putting his music on loud to clean the house on a Saturday (and to force the kids out of bed to help) but he could never connect to the music himself. Through his twenties Kieran felt stuck and lost and Springsteen's lyrics started taking on new layers of meaning. After he lost his mum to cancer, he paid tribute to her by performing Born in the U.S.A. (dressed as Bruce) in full on stage. Singing Dancing in the Dark live became a celebration of his mum's life and gave Kieran a new sense of drive and focus.
"You can't start a fire / You can't start a fire without a spark" - Ian Gravell was driving to pick up his daughter from nursery on a snowy evening when a lorry appeared out of nowhere. He spent weeks in the hospital recovering from the crash and thought he might never walk again, until hospital staff played his favourite Springsteen album in the physiotherapy room and the lyrics compelled him to his feet.
'Messages keep getting clearer / Radio's on and I'm moving round my place' - Musician Lucy Dacus talks about playing the song on stage with her dad and the genius of Springsteen's lyrics.
"There's something happening somewhere / Baby, I just know that there is" - Artist Holly Casio found huge comfort in Springsteen's music as a young person growing up gay in a small town in West Yorkshire in the era of Section 28. It gave them reassurance that somewhere out there was acceptance, joy and queer community. She talks about getting out, finding her people, and what Bruce Springsteen's music has meant to her then and now.
"This gun's for hire / Even if we're just dancing in the dark"- when Jackie Heintz brought a Springsteen record home as a teenager, she never imagined that her mum Jeannie would become a huge fan – following Bruce on tour through her 70s and 80s, and dancing on stage with him aged 91. After the death of her husband, the lyrics offered Jeannie huge comfort and since Jeannie’s death in 2020 they now do the same for Jackie.
Produced by Mair Bosworth and Caitlin Hobbs