(Credits: Far Out / Carl Lender)
Thu 30 October 2025 20:00, UK
The entire ethos around Bruce Springsteen was about making music for the everyman.
There had been enough rock and roll heroes by the time he came around, and while he was treated just like one of them when he started, he knew that there wasn’t a point in trying to tell stories that were larger-than-life. He always wrote about what he knew, and even up until his later years, he never forgot the power of the little moments that happen in every single town across America.
Because when you think about it, you aren’t going to find anyone in rock and roll more proud to be an American than ‘The Boss’. There are definitely people who like to flaunt the flag and talk about how proud they are of their freedom every now and again, but Springsteen always valued what the true American values stood for, whether that’s the idea of anyone being able to find their own lives here or the kind of camaraderie that can unite everyone when things grow dark.
But throughout all of his songs, that kind of hope doesn’t come without some sadness too. As much as Born to Run feels like the ultimate teenage statement, you tend to forget that there’s an extremely sad story in the middle of it. The title track does a great job at painting this picture of a the narrator and his girlfriend finding the first ticket out of their town and flying down the New Jersey highway to chase their dreams, but by the end of ‘Jungleland’, they’re forever stuck in the same place with scarred dreams and broken egos.
That is a bitter pill for anyone to swallow, but ‘The Boss’ knew how necessary that kind of record was. Not everyone gets to live out their dreams, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t still worth chasing after, either. And when looking at where he went later on in his career, Springsteen could still see the beauty in that kind of teenage angst when making tracks like ‘Girls in Their Summer Clothes’.
The title itself is already a lovely callback to The Rolling Stones, but ‘The Boss’ isn’t looking to paint his life in black on this song. This was the kind of summer anthem that was meant to capture the feeling of being young again, and when talking about writing the tune, he felt that the lyric about hitting the town once the evening was underway was the image every rocker should strive for.
It wasn’t the most witty line he ever wrote, but Springsteen knew that the feeling couldn’t have been captured any better, saying, “I think people listening to that know who that guy is. I was interested in having a song where you get this classic image of a late summer, light on, in a small American town, and it’s perfect in a way that only occurs in pop songs – when the air is just right, where the sun’s sitting a certain way.”
And it’s that sense of intrigue that keeps people coming back to all of Springsteen’s work. The kid in ‘Girls in Their Summer Clothes’ has that same glimmer in his eye as the characters in ‘Thunder Road’, but in between those songs, he found a way to bring out a little more nuance in those characters that hadn’t been seen since he started working on The Rising in the wake of 9/11.
The thought of Springsteen writing a purely happy song is always going to be a gamble in a post Human Touch world, but ‘Girls in Their Summer Clothes’ isn’t strictly about fun in the sun by any stretch. The kid in this tune might not have all the answers and the odds might be stacked against him on that perfect summer night, but he’s going to try his best to turn those odds around.
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