A great chef can take a few ingredients and use them to create any number of wonderful dishes. So why shouldn’t the same be true for songwriters?
Hardcore Springsteen fans are well aware of Bruce’s penchant for recycling lyrics and music; it stems from his practice of writing lyrics and music independently of each other.
Verses and sometimes just fragments or phrases will loiter in his notebook for years. Some will eventually make it to one or more demos and studio recordings, most of which will end up in the vault, maybe to be released one day on an outtake collection. Occasionally, we even see snippets of shared DNA between multiple officially released songs (“Further On (Up the Road)” and “Maria’s Bed,” for example).
And then there’s “Party Lights,” the product of so much Springsteenian in-breeding that it would be a joke–if it wasn’t so darn catchy.
Buried deep on the outtake disc that accompanies The Ties That Bind: The River Collection, “Party Lights” is two parts “Jersey Girl,” one-and-a-half parts “Point Blank,” and almost a heaping dollop of “I Wanna Marry You” before Bruce thought better of it and swapped it for a riff almost certainly influenced by Tom Petty’s “Listen to Her Heart” (released just a year prior).
Check out the official video(!) below:
Yes, there’s a whole lot of shared DNA here, but what’s amazing is that Bruce uses these spare parts to piece together a song that not only sounds coherent but is also a substantively different song than its kissing cousins.
“Point Blank” is dark and noir-ish; “Jersey Girl” is blue-collar romance. “Party Lights” is somewhere in between, a tale of an older-than-her-years single mother and her street suitor and would-be savior.
I know the girls well they grow up fast where you come from
You left behind what was asked and you were married baby oh so young
Now that little girl of yours looks like she’s growing up overnight
But do you miss the party lights
Do you miss the party lights
Do you miss the party lights when you’re lying in bed at night
This is probably as good a place as any to detour to an early work-in-progress version, if only to shed more light on the actual “oh so young” age of the girl Bruce sings to. Although he (wisely) dropped the lyric for the final version, in this early version, Bruce makes it clear that the girl married at the age of fifteen.
(Oh, and see what I mean about the melody from “I Wanna Marry You?”)
But let’s not let ourselves be distracted by the lyrics that would eventually end up in “Point Blank.” Instead, let’s focus on the end of the verse, because Bruce pulls off two very effective tricks here: first, he refers to the daughter growing up overnight, a subtly powerful way of taking us inside the mother’s mind and revealing her sense of time passing her by. It’s all from a distance, though–rather than revealing her direct thoughts, Bruce uses the allusion to reinforce the isolation she must feel. And to put a point on it, Bruce establishes the song’s central conceit: the party lights that symbolize her youth, freedom, independence, and freedom from care.
He was gonna be your Romeo, you were gonna be his Juliet
These days you don’t wait on Romeos, you just wait on that welfare check
While other girls your age are out with lovers taking in the night
Do you miss the party lights
Do you miss the party lights
Do you miss the party lights when you’re lying in bed at night
Here’s the point where we deviate from “Point Blank” to “Jersey Girl”–the point at which it becomes clear that our narrator is no detached observer but rather someone who takes a very strong interest–although the nature of his interest is not exactly clear.
Sometimes I see you on the street and you look so tired
I know that job you’ve got leaves you so uninspired
When I stop by to take you out to eat
I find you lying, all dressed up on the bed, baby, fast asleep
Then as I lean across the bed, darling, to switch out the light
I wonder if you miss the party lights
Do you miss the party lights
Do you miss the party lights when you’re lying in bed at night
Grab your coat and grab your hat, go in the bathroom, put that make up on
We’re gonna take that little brat, we’re gonna drop her off at your mom’s
Yeah just give me a sign, I’m waiting on the line tonight
If you miss the party lights
If you miss the party lights
If you miss the party lights when you’re lying in bed at night
Do you miss the party lights when you’re lying in bed at night
Do you miss the party lights
Again, I feel compelled to point out how the same lyrics can carry different meaning in two different settings: in “Jersey Girl,” it’s clear that Bruce is singing about a romantic relationship. In “Party Lights,” it’s not that clear.
Certainly the guy and the girl don’t live together–he refers to “stopping by” and seeing her “sometimes” on the street. But they are on familiar enough terms for him to enter her house while she sleeps, and he’s gallant enough to switch out the lights rather than rouse her.
Even the final verse makes it seem as if the two characters share a deep but platonic bond. It may not be a coincidence that Bruce recorded “Two Hearts” just four months later–in theme, “Party Lights” may have more in common with that song than with either of the songs with which it shares lyrics.
Before we leave, there’s something else worth pointing out about “Party Lights.” It’s a rare instance of a recently released outtake that bears no signs of modern-day grafting or splicing, a truly vintage recording of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at the height of their powers.
“Party Lights” has never been performed live, but it surely deserves to be.
Bonus: Here’s yet another work-in-progress arrangement (this time a rockabilly one) of “Party Lights,” from the spring of 1981, well after the release of The River. It seems Bruce didn’t give up on this one so easily.
Party Lights
Recorded: October 8, 1979
Released: The Ties That Bind: The River Collection (2015)
Never performed
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