How good a songwriter is Bruce Springsteen?
So good that he can ad-lib a namecheck of his sound engineer in a song, keep it in the vault for over thirty years, release it when everyone knows the guy’s name… and then magically, the lyrics make even more sense then they did when recorded.
Yeah, he’s that good. Or maybe just lucky. But we’ll get to that later.
We’re so used to Bruce taking his music so seriously that it’s almost jarring to see him casually throw an ultimate in-joke during an actual recording session.
But “Ain’t Good Enough For You” was never meant to be taken seriously.
Bruce wrote literally dozens of songs for the sessions that yielded Darkness on the Edge of Town, and while Bruce ultimately curated a dark, serious selection of tracks for the album, he still gave his lighter side an outlet, writing and recording a pile of fun, even goofy, pop songs that he wisely preserved in his vault until he was ready to release them to the world on Tracks in 1998 and The Promise in 2010.
“Ain’t Good Enough For You” was one of those songs.
Set against a backing track that features the E Street Band at their most ebullient (Roy in particular gets a workout on this track, Clarence carries the tune on his sauntering sax, and the entire band provides raucous party rock backing vocals a la “Sherry Darling“), “Ain’t Good Enough For You” is about a shallow a song as we’ll find in Bruce’s catalog. The lyrics essentially amount to: get off my case, woman.
Well you don’t like, don’t like the way I walk
And you don’t like, don’t like the way I talk
You criticize about me endlessly
Logic defies how you get stuck with me
And you complain about the clothes I wear
And you explain there’s other boys out there
You complain my car makes too much noise
And you cry I’m always out with the boys
Whoa whoa (whoa whoa whoa whoa)
I give up little darling (whoa whoa little darling)
Yeah no matter what I do, girl you know it’s true
Ain’t good enough for you
Poor guy: his girl picks on the way he walks, talks, dresses, and drives. For a twenty-something rock star, is it possible to get any closer to the bone? Oh yeah:
You complain the way I love you at night
You explain I’m really not your type
If we go out, you say I’m such a bore
If we stay in, you say what are we living for
I don’t understand, there’s nothing I can do
There ain’t no way I can satisfy you
End of the night I lean in for a kiss
Here comes the pitch: a swing and a miss
Ouch.
This guy’s either a real loser or a real jerk. Or maybe both, we can’t tell.
And here’s where Bruce’s ad-libbed in-joke actually rescues the song from throwaway status, because the earlier circulating bootleg versions that floated around for years don’t include the song’s final verse. Take a listen and hear for yourself:
We don’t know whether Bruce ever intended to add a third verse. We only know that on that day in January 1978, Jimmy Iovine reported for engineer duty wearing a new shirt and with a Bloomingdale’s bag in his hand. Bruce had never heard of the store and was amused by Iovine’s fascination with it.
And just like that, Bruce worked the entire incident into the song on the spot. (You can tell from his inability to get through the lines without cracking up–he clearly sprung them as a surprise on the band and crew.)
Yes, it’s funny. And yes, it’s amazing that all these years later, we all know who Jimmy Iovine is. But let both of those things wash over you and then go back and listen to the song again.
Because that ad-libbed verse saves the song. It’s only because of these new lyrics that we can see that our protagonist is a romantic rather than a jerk:
I tried to change, I got a job in sales
I bought a shirt uptown in Bloomingdales
And babe I tried to make the latest scene
Hitting cool just like Jimmy Iovine
I bought a record with all the latest grooves
A book of love with all the latest moves
I bought some flowers and I waited at your door
And you came out, didn’t want to see me no more
He’s still a loser, mind you, but for the first time in the song, we can at least see that he’s truly fond of his girl, and we sympathize with him even if we’re fortunate enough to never have had the life experience to empathize with him.
So “Ain’t Good Enough For You” is actually a great song, almost entirely by accident and coincidence.
We can forgive Bruce for not realizing it early on (although he must have known he was on to something, because he transplanted the melody on to “This Little Girl“), but once he rescued it from obscurity and released it on The Promise in 2010, what excuse does he have for playing it so rarely ever since?
Because “Ain’t Good Enough For You” is more than just a great pop song, it’s a great live song. But very few of us are fortunate enough to have heard it.
If you were lucky enough to have been among the sixty fans present for Bruce’s promotional “carousel” concert in December 2010, you were witness not just to the live debut of the song, but also to Clarence’s one and only performance of it. And three decades later, Bruce still couldn’t get through the song without cracking up.
Despite the fun that Bruce, the band, and the fans were obviously having with it, that was the one and only outing for “Ain’t Good Enough For You” in the United States.
European fans have been a bit more fortunate: Bruce played the song three times on the European Wrecking Ball Tour. I was lucky enough to have been there for its last performance to date, in Gijon, Spain, in July 2013. Bruce played “Ain’t Good Enough For You” by request in the opening pack (which may have been my favorite opening string of songs ever), and I might have been the only one in the stadium more surprised than Bruce that everyone present seemed to know the song by heart and sang along to every note. It was one of my all-time favorite moments at a Springsteen concert:
(but he still couldn’t get through the Iovine line without cracking up)
Ain’t Good Enough For You
Recorded: January 1978
Released: The Promise (2010)
First performed: December 7, 2010 (Asbury Park, NJ)
Last performed: June 26, 2013 (Gijon, Spain)
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