The Tom Waits Lyric That Suited Bruce Springsteen to a Tee

Tom Waits did not write “Jersey Girl” for Bruce Springsteen to record. Let’s clear that up right up front. It’s just that once Springsteen did start playing the song live, it was hard to separate the song from the singer, so suited were they to each other.

As a result, Waits joins Jimmy Cliff (“Trapped”) and Gary U.S. Bonds (“Quarter to Three”), among a few others, as artists who had songs with which they were once identified hijacked by the force of Springsteen’s recording personality. Not bad company at all, in that all three originals were pretty great to start.

Girl from the Garden State

Tom Waits had recently struck up a relationship with Kathleen Brennan as the 1970s neared an end. (The two would eventually marry, and they remain a couple to this day). She was the “Jersey Girl,” even though she wasn’t born or raised in the state. Brennan just happened to be living there when the two got together after meeting on a movie set.

When Waits recorded the song in 1980 for the album Heartattack and Vine, he was very much still in the mode of barroom balladeer, a stance he had cultivated for most of the early part of his career. He was still a few years away from the clangorous glory of albums like Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs.

Springsteen was listening, and he heard in “Jersey Girl” a song that simply seemed too apropos to be true, considering his status as the Garden State’s favorite son. Not even a year after the song was released, The Boss was already playing it live, in front of New Jersey audiences to boot. He’d release a live version of the song as a B-side in 1984, and he included it as the closing track of his massive concert collection Live 1975-85.

He has even performed the song with Waits on a couple of occasions. It’s notable that Springsteen’s version of the song includes a verse of his own creation. Like a few other Waits classics, it received a lot more attention as a cover than it ever did in the original version. That’s a bit of a shame, because the original recording is a particularly fine distillation of his unique combination of sweet and sour.

Examining the Lyrics of “Jersey Girl”

“Jersey Girl” is actually one of the more straightforward Tom Waits anthems you’ll find. Springsteen’s extra verse gives the girl a bit of a backstory. But Waits is only concerned with the effect she has on the narrator, in that she takes precedence over all the things in his life that once dragged his attention away.

Got no time for the corner boys, Waits attests at the beginning of the song. Down in the street makin’ all that noise. The whores on Eighth Avenue also fail to thrill him like they once might have. He needs to be where she is immediately: Cause tonight I’m gonna take that ride / Across the river to the Jersey side.

Waits then takes the time to throw in some descriptions of the local color, since his love and the state start to become intertwined: Take my baby to the carnival / And I’ll take you on the rides. Down the shore everything’s all night, he insists. But maybe not so much for the lonely: You with your baby on a Saturday night.

The narrator can see his future will consist of embracing the “Jersey Girl” and eventually marrying her. What else can hold a candle to that?: Nothin’ else matters in this whole wide world / When you’re in love with a Jersey girl.

Waits then indulges in a sha-la-la chorus, as his narrator goes drifting off into a reverie about his love. He couldn’t have known at the time that the wordless chorus would be put to use by another famous artist. It turned out the charm of this particular “Jersey Girl” would enchant many more folks than he ever could have imagined.

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