Bruce Springsteen – "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" (1973)

And my machine, she's a dud

I'm stuck in the mud

Somewhere in the swamps of Jersey

Which isn’t a bad description of Bruce Springsteen’s entire musical oeuvre.

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Springsteen has one unarguably great song to his credit – “Born to Run.”

But most of his other most popular songs – “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” “Born in the U.S.A.,” “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” “Hungry Heart,” “Dancing in the Dark” – are awful.

Then there are his oh-so-sensitive-and-serious songs – lugubrious downers like “Streets of Philadelphia” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”

Ugh.

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I’m sorry to be so negative, but my trivia team pissed away a healthy lead tonight and finished out of the money – meaning no free beer for us – for the third straight week.  So I am in a bad, bad, BAD mood.

But that’s not why I’ve decided that Bruce Springsteen is OVERRATED – I decided that a l-o-n-g time ago.

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I wouldn’t have a problem with today's featured song if it was an instrumental, or the lyrics were sung in a language other than English.

But what are you supposed to do with triter-than-trite lyrics like these?

I know a pretty little place in Southern California

Down San Diego way

There's a little café

Where they play guitars all night and all day

Or this:

Now, I know your mama, she don't like me

‘Cause I play in a rock and roll band

And I know your daddy, he don't dig me

But he never did understand

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Here’s a comment I came across while listening to “The Ghost of Tom Joad” on YouTube:  “He’s just as talented and insightful as Bob Dylan.”  Talk about damning someone with faint praise.

To be fair to Dylan, I don’t recall that he ever wrote lyrics as creepy as these lines from “Rosalita”:

The only lover I'm ever gonna need

Is your soft, sweet, little girl’s tongue

(Gag me with a spoon.)

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Click here to listen to the studio version of “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight).”

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: