Even now, almost eighteen years later, “You’re Missing” hits like a punch to the gut.
Until Bruce released it on The Rising in 2002, we didn’t know how much we needed this song. Still reeling from a national tragedy, it seemed that everyone in America knew someone directly affected by the 9/11 terror attacks, and we were still grappling with how to process it.
There had been calls to arms, calls to caution, and calls to nationalism disguised as patriotism (or maybe it was the other way around). But no one had yet expressed in words the loss the nation was feeling.
And then, in the summer of 2002 came The Rising, Bruce Springsteen’s first album of new original material in seven years. The Rising was and still is commonly considered a 9/11 album, but in truth most of the songs had been written, performed, and in some cases recorded long before.
But towards the end of the album comes a remarkable three-song sequence that directly addresses the tragedy of the year before. The title track is the centerpiece, drawing us into a 9/11 first responder’s final moments. “The Rising” is bookended by two songs that focus on the loss felt by those left behind by the ones who rose on that day.
Of the two, “Paradise” is the more artistic; I shared my thoughts on it during the earliest days of my blog. But “You’re Missing” is the more powerful song for its simplicity.
“You’re Missing” is a melancholy reverie. Roy Bittan’s pump organ draws us in gently at the start, as if we’re waking from or succumbing to a dream. Larry Lemaster’s cello establishes a monotonous melody; Max Weinberg provides a plodding backbeat. Soozie’s violin weaves sadly through the song. The combined effect is one inertia: we feel pulled forward rather than carried.
When the vocals enter, Bruce’s voice is simultaneously distant and tender, taking note of his surroundings but all the while feeling the profound absence of his lost love.
Shirts in the closet, shoes in the hall
Mama’s in the kitchen, baby and all
Everything is everything
Everything is everything
But you’re missing
Coffee cups on the counter, jackets on the chair
Papers on the door step, but you’re not there
Everything is everything
Everything is everything
But you’re missing
Nothing happens in these verses. Nothing happens through the entire song, in fact.
“You’re Missing” isn’t about plot, and it’s not about musicality. It’s about feeling the overwhelming and simultaneous presence and absence of the one you’ve built your life with when that person is taken from you.
You can’t escape the reminders: their clothes, their shoes, the family you shared. The left out coffee cups and jackets that would have driven her nuts; the paper they would have brought inside. Things in their place, things out of place–everything same and everything different reminds you of the one who’s missing.
The chorus (such as it is) is heartbreaking–how can all the things that make a home continue to exist when the heart of the family no longer beats? And yet it does: everything is still everything.
Pictures on the nightstand, TV’s on the den
Your house is waiting, your house is waiting
For you to walk in, for you to walk in
But you’re missing, you’re missing
Many of Bruce’s songs can be summed up in a single line. “Your house is waiting for you to walk in” — that’s the song, right there. In one line, Bruce tells us so much: that the family’s loss is recent, that their home still bears the imprint of their lost one, that our narrator still can’t quite believe she’s gone, that the entire family and their home still aches to see her walk through their door once more.
If there was an award for economy in songwriting, “You’re Missing” would be in the Hall of Fame.
You’re missing when I shut out the lights
You’re missing when I close my eyes
You’re missing when I see the sun rise
You’re missing
Time passes, and the nights are long. Her absence is the last thing our narrator feels when he goes to sleep, and the first thing he notices when he wakes.
And in the middle of the night, Danny Federici’s organ carries the children on tiptoe into their parents’ bedroom:
Children are asking if it’s alright
Will you be in our arms tonight?
Again, Bruce manages to convey so much in a simple couplet: the sadness of children who miss their mother; the concern for a father so deep in mourning that his children feel his emotional absence. Are they asking for their mother’s embrace or their fathers? Both are denied in the moment.
The next verse echoes the bridge: time continues to pass, as it does.
Morning is morning, the evening falls
I got too much room in my bed, too many phone calls
How’s everything, everything
Everything, everything
But you’re missing, you’re missing
Morning comes, then evening–with nothing in between. In the early days of grief, loss is all you feel. Friends and family call to comfort, but all they serve to do is remind. And at the end of the day, in the place where only your partner should accompany you, you’re alone.
The final couplet of the song is the one that’s generated the most discussion over the years:
God’s drifting in heaven, devil’s in the mailbox
I got dust on my shoes, nothing but teardrops
“You’re Missing” is a song filled with simple and literal imagery–yet Bruce closes it with religious and abstract metaphor.
Because it was written in the aftermath of 9/11 (although Bruce drew liberally from his lyrically and thematically similar “Missing” from 1996), literal-minded critics and fans believe the devil in the mailbox is a direct reference to the recent anthrax postal attacks; the dust on the narrator’s shoes a reminder if not a remnant of the World Trade Center attacks. Others argue that the devil is symbolic, that Bruce is arguing that in the aftermath of such evil, it’s easy to succumb to hate and hard to keep one’s faith.
Who’s right? If you ask me, I think it’s a silly argument. Bruce is too meticulous in his songwriting to not realize that listeners would associate his metaphor with specific events–but he’s also too much the poet to anchor the song to a specific time period. The answer is: Bruce write in layers, and he intentionally chose a metaphor that works on both levels. To debate and choose a side is to not recognize Bruce’s artistry at work.
These are the final lyrics of the song, but Bruce doesn’t let “You’re Missing” end the way it begins. Instead, Danny plays us out with one of his finest solos on record, conveying the full brunt of the narrator’s grief, but also–for the first time in the song–the sense that the narrator is moving forward of his own volition.
Grief takes us down a long, lonely tunnel, but somewhere at the far, far end of it, there’s light.
Bruce performed “You’re Missing” over 100 times throughout the Rising Tour, in an arrangement very close to that of the album. Bruce tried his best nightly to give the song the quiet tenderness it deserved, but in large arenas, that was a tough feat to pull off.
So if you ask me for my favorite live performance of “You’re Missing,” I’ll choose the one almost no one was in the room for: on October 5, 2002, Bruce quietly rehearsed in an empty studio for his Saturday Night Live appearance that evening.
Bruce only soundchecked three songs that afternoon: “Lonesome Day,” “My Hometown,” and a solo piano rendition of “You’re Missing.” Performed in a darkened, empty studio with no accompaniment other than Bruce’s piano, nothing distracts from the pain and pathos of Bruce’s lyrics.
In the 17 years since the end of the Rising Tour, “You’re Missing” has been mostly, well, missing. Bruce has only played it twice in the intervening years, once on his solo acoustic tour in 2005, and once on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. That last performance to date was also the first in more than a decade; for those of us in the room, given the occasion and long absence, “You’re Missing” felt as fresh and raw as when Bruce first debuted it.
Other than that special one-off, Bruce seems to have retired “You’re Missing” from rotation, and that’s okay. It’s a song that comes out when needed, when a community is reeling or reminded of a terrible tragedy. We can only hope that such occasions never come again.
You’re Missing
Recorded: February-March, 2002
Released: The Rising (2002)
First performed: July 25, 2002 (Asbury Park, NJ)
Last performed: September 11, 2016 (Pittsburgh, PA)
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