Sometimes Bruce Springsteen covers a song, and sometimes he transforms it.
When it comes to “A Rainy Night in Soho,” he absolutely inhabits it.
When The Pogues originally released “A Rainy Night in Soho” in 1986 on their Poetry in Motion album, singer/songwriter Shane McGowan was only 28 years old.
It is an abiding mystery to me how someone of so few years could write a song full of so many.
It was a mystery to McGowan too. In a 2012 interview, he said the song was “automatic writing.”
“I had no idea what it was about,” he continued. “I had a vague idea by the time I got to the fourth verse but until then I hadn’t got a clue what was going on.”
Whether divine inspiration or preternatural insight, “A Rainy Night in Soho” is a devastatingly moving remembrance of a lifelong love. It’s never clear whether the narrator’s love has moved on, passed on, or is still beside him, and the song is more powerful for the uncertainty.
At risk of slighting the original artist, the only thing that keeps the original from transcendence is the young singer’s vocal delivery. He can’t quite conjure the world-weariness the lyrics require.
Springsteen didn’t have that problem. His version drips with memory, joy, regret, loss, reverie… the things that come with age. Were McGowan still with us to sing his song today, perhaps he’d imbue it with such poignancy, too.
Sadly, McGowan passed away in late 2023, and it was in his memory that Bruce first performed “A Rainy Night in Soho” during a trio of shows in Ireland the following spring.
Bruce was fortunate to pay a call on McGowan in his home just a few months before his passing. He wrote about that visit and about his friend and published it along with his studio cover of “A Rainy Night in Soho.”
Every once in a while, every once in a great while, an artist comes along whose voice seems to speak to history itself. Woody Guthrie, Jimmy Rogers, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Miles Davis, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, John Coltrane, Patti Smith, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, John Lydon, Hank Williams, Sinatra. Geniuses all, they were both timeless and the embodiment of their moment in time. Many, unsurprisingly, led difficult lives not easily bound by the shackles of convention. They were natural rebels unable to stifle or heed the impulses that led them to their glory and personal hardships.
The dangerous joy, the glee and courage, the humor in the face of fate, the wild ramble of a life driven towards the artistic heavens and the daily balm of self obliteration. Shane was all naked bottomless humanity. Threatening to force us to ask ourselves if we were living deeply, authentically. He was raw, hilarious, no apologies and profound. His soul was filled with the transgressive and ecstatic properties of the saints. I don’t know who’ll be listening to my music in 100 years but I know they’ll be listening to Shane’s.
Though I did not know Shane very well, I spent a lovely afternoon in his presence shortly before he passed. He was not well but he and his wife Victoria proved warm and gracious hosts. As I left, I thanked him for his beautiful work, his music, his songs, his life. I stood in his warmth, kissed him and told him I loved him.
We should all be so lucky to have someone as the measure of our dreams. And we should all be so deliberate to tell the ones we love how much they mean to us.
A Rainy Night in Soho
Released: 20th Century Paddy (2026)
First performed: May 12, 2024 (Kilkenny, Ireland)
Last performed: May 19, 2024 (Dublin, Ireland)
© July 24, 2026
