At the very end of an EP that almost nobody noticed (including the artist, it seems, because he’s never even once performed any of the songs on it) resides one of Bruce Springsteen’s most breathtaking songs.
“Hey Blue Eyes” is absolutely devastating in its withering criticism of American hypocrisy, but that’s not the impressive part. What makes “Hey Blue Eyes” such an astonishingly powerful song is the way it works on three completely different levels all at once–all while set against a deceptively lilting melody that seems ignorant of the lyrical content (a deliberate piece of Springsteen meta-commentary).
Even if you’re a longtime fan, odds are decent (more so than for almost any other song in Bruce’s catalog at least) that you’ve never given “Hey Blue Eyes” a hard listen. Take five minutes and listen now, and then we’ll dive in.
See what I mean?
“Hey Blue Eyes” almost certainly hails back to the Magic sessions, or at the very least to that period in Bruce’s songwriting. For a time, Bruce was clearly taken with the notion of constructing biting political commentary that also functioned on an intimate, personal level. (See “Your Own Worst Enemy” and “Long Walk Home” for prime examples.)
On “Hey Blue Eyes,” Bruce tosses subtlety out the window and yet somehow still manages to craft a multi-layered condemnation that demands close attention and scrutiny from its listeners.
So let’s grant it:
They’re holding a committee of treason and lies
Doublespeak and sedition, then somebody dies
From the hill, the smell of lilacs and the repeat of guns
She closes the window, draws the blinds, her first touch sucks the air from my lungs
Hey blue eyes, what you doing tonight
Hey blue eyes, yeah it’s alright
Bruce often plainly establishes his scene and spells out his message at the outset of a song, but not here. On first listen, the first verse of “Hey Blue Eyes” is deliberately unclear. We could be listening to a dark romance–it certainly wouldn’t be the first time Bruce used such imagery in doing so. (“Point Blank” has a similarly unsettling and threatening first verse and chorus.)
Treason and lies are suitable stand-ins for infidelity and betrayal; lilacs and guns can symbolize the sweetness and hurtfulness that intertwine in toxic relationships; and that chorus might just be our narrator willing to overlook any amount of dysfunction for just one more tryst.
And in fact, we could continue to hear “Hey Blue Eyes” through this lens, and it would work all the way through, in a way that would make “Reno” seem tame by comparison.
But even on first listen, there’s the sense that Bruce is leading us toward something else.
She says, “In this house we’ve abandoned history, in this house there are no laws
Just the false taste of paradise and then the fall
In this house the guilty go unpunished, blood and silence prevail
Here the dead remain nameless, the nameless remain jailed”
“In this house there’s just the dust of bones, the basement’s filled with lye
In this house our sons and daughters are spilled like wine
So come close my pretty darling and let me feel your disease
Tonight I’ll have you naked and crawling at the end of my leash”
By the end of these next two verses, we’re pretty sure that “Hey Blue Eyes” is about more than sadomasochism.
It’s important to notice that Bruce switches the narrative perspective from the very first line of the second verse–we’re no longer listening to the original narrator, and we won’t for the remainder of the song (except for the recurring chorus).
Now, we’re actually hearing from Blue Eyes, as she tells us exactly what she’s doing tonight:
She’s abandoned her principles.
She looks the other way while innocents suffer and die.
And she takes command of her companion, stripping him of dignity and free will.
And we realize we know exactly who Blue Eyes is, as much or more so today as at the height of the Bush administration when Bruce wrote the song. The chorus now takes on a more sinister overtone–when Bruce asks Blue Eyes “what you doing tonight,” we now hear it as a warning: “I see what you’re doing.”
And yet…
In addition to the darkly sexual and damningly political readings, there’s a third level at which “Hey Blue Eyes” functions, and it hits us with a jolt at the end of the third verse, with a jarringly familiar (for those who paid attention to the news at the time) image of a naked man at the end of a leash. That’s a direct reference to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of U.S. personnel at Abu Grahib.
And suddenly, we can go back and re-listen to the song in an even harsher light: Blue Eyes is now literally a torturer, and sucking the air from the narrator’s lungs is no longer a figure of speech. The dead, the nameless, the sons and daughters all come into much clearer view, and the chorus grows darker still.
In the final verse, Bruce ties a brutally effective bow around all three readings of the song:
She says, “In this house it’s so easy to set a world on fire
All you need is a name, the money, and a soul full of reckless desire
Upstairs the landlord is dining here with his criminal friends
Don’t worry, they’ll have the bags packed and be long gone before the real fucking begins”
Bruce intentionally uses the word “fucking” here, because he knows the effect it will have on us, his listeners. It jolts us, because we’re used to more artful euphemisms in his work. This is Bruce setting an alarm clock, telling us that it’s time to wake up from the spell of the song, time to go back and re-listen to the song through a coarser, uglier lens. And in doing so, we’re even more unsure:
Are we listening to an S&M prostitute reassuring her john that their session will be undisturbed?
Are we hearing condemnations of the U.S. president, who will leave office before the consequences of his actions, manipulations, and orders are fully felt–or the soldiers who receive empty promises and reassurance that their actions are legal and their return home imminent?
Maybe Bruce is calling out the defense contractors and oil companies who profit from Blue Eyes’ particular predilections?
The answer is yes. Yes to all of it.
And as the song trails the final chorus, we’re deeply unsettled by the realization that the chorus is our inner national dialogue: What are we doing? And yeah, it has to be alright. Because if it’s not, what does that make us?
Hey blue eyes, yeah, what you doing tonight
Hey blue eyes, hey it’s alright
Hey blue eyes, what you doing tonight
Hey blue eyes, yeah it’s alright
Hey Blue Eyes
Recorded: Unknown, but likely 2007-ish
Released: American Beauty (2014)
Never performed
Looking for your favorite Bruce song? Check our full index. New entries every week!
