“Red Headed Woman” is generally considered to be Bruce’s first officially released song featuring cunnilingus, but it’s actually his second. He slipped “Cross My Heart” past fans with very little notice.
Buried deep on Side One of Human Touch, “Cross My Heart” beat “Red Headed Woman” to market by a full year. (“Red Headed Woman” gets bragging rights for being performed earlier, however.)
Why one song attracted prurient notice and the other didn’t, I can’t answer; why Bruce found himself compelled to write two songs featuring the act in short order… hey, the guy was a newlywed.
In any event, “Cross My Heart” isn’t about cunnilingus any more than “Reno” is about butt stuff, but since the act is what attracts attention on first listen, I thought it best to address it before moving on to the main event.
At any rate, Bruce drew upon more than just blue subject matter for his inspiration for this Human Touch deep cut–he also drew on the blues itself, borrowing his song’s title, theme, and so much of the lyrics from “Cross My Heart” by Sonny Boy Williamson II that he gave Williamson a co-writer’s credit.
Musically, the two songs couldn’t be more different. Williamson’s 1958 single is considered a blues classic with a stunning harmonica solo; Bruce’s song… well, compared to the other songs on Human Touch we can at least admire the restraint shown in the arrangement and production. (It still screams early nineties, though.)
“Cross My Heart” is downright spare by Human Touch standards, with a total of four instruments: Bruce’s guitar, Roy’s keys, Randy Jackson on bass, and Toto’s Jeff Porcaro on drums. Bruce seems to be reaching for something steamy and sultry with this backing track, but he never quite gets there. Or maybe he overshoots, I can’t quite decide.
Lyrically, though, Bruce hews pretty closely to Williamson’s line–both songs center around a protagonist desperately pleading to be forgiven for his indiscretions, promising faithfulness evermore. But whereas Williamson’s narrator seems a genuinely repentant and changed man (like the narrator of “Back in Your Arms“), Bruce’s protagonist seems to be a bit more self-aware.
First time I crossed my heart I was begging baby please
At your bedside down on my knees
When I crossed my heart
It’s when I crossed my heart
I crossed my heart pretty baby over you
The action begins with a couplet largely lifted from Williamson’s song and transformed into a devilishly clever visual double entendre. Clearly, our narrator has done something wrong and is begging his lover to take him back, but by placing his character’s act of supplication besides his lover’s bedside, Bruce suggests that his narrator’s apology is accompanied by an earthly act of contrition. In other words, he’s about to orally please his lover if only she’ll let him.
Although likely employed as idiom, the narrator’s use of the sign of the cross to promise his faithfulness (from now on) is ironic given the morality tale that lies beneath “Cross My Heart.”
Second time I crossed my heart rain came in from the south
I was lying there with something sweet and salty in my mouth
When I crossed my heart
It’s when I crossed my heart
When I crossed my heart pretty darling over you
Yeah, that means what you think it does. If the first verse was foreplay, the second is afterglow.
Our narrator’s oral skills brought his lover to climax, with sweet and salty rain coming “from the south” into his mouth. Perhaps his first promise was meant to convince his lover, but this second heart-cross seems more like a promise to himself: I’m not gonna screw this up again.
Maybe.
As is often the case, Bruce hides the moral of the song in the bridge–or in this case, two bridges. Here’s the first:
Well you may think the world’s black and white
And you’re dirty or you’re clean
Son, you better watch out you don’t slip
Through them spaces in between
Despite our narrator’s promises of fidelity, Bruce is suggesting that we are listening to someone who rationalizes his actions when he falls short. He’s generally good, mostly faithful. But the world isn’t binary, Bruce cautions, and you can find yourself going south in small increments.
Significantly, the bridge is addressed not to the narrator’s lover but to the narrator himself. (Notice the “son” that’s almost under his breath.) That’s a subtle but significant detail. Combined with the sudden context switch, it suggests that we are listening to the narrator’s inner conscience talking, or perhaps even the voice of the omniscient songwriter.
But before either we or our narrator can consider this further, Bruce brings us back to the heat of the moment.
Where the night gets sticky and the sky gets black
Grabbed you baby and you grabbed me back
And we crossed our heart
There’s an extended instrumental break (accompanied by some vocal whooping) that implies our protagonist is getting busy and ignoring that pesky inner voice. But then comes that second bridge…
Well little boys, little girls
Yeah they know their wrongs from their rights
And once you cross your heart
Well you ain’t ever supposed to lie
That second couplet is another lift from Sonny Boy, and it’s a telling one. Our narrator may mean his promise in the moment, but he knows himself well enough to know he’s not apt to keep it forever. But he’s not going to ponder that now–he’s too content in this moment.
Bruce brings it home in a final verse that lays his character’s motivation bare.
Well life ain’t nothing but a cold hard ride
I ain’t leaving ’til I’m satisfied
I cross my heart
Yeah I cross my heart
Well I cross my heart pretty darling over you
There are at least a couple ways to read this, none of them charitable. When he says “I ain’t leaving ’til I’m satisfied,” our narrator may be referring to his lover’s bedroom or to life in general, but either way his motivations are selfish ones. His pledge may be sincere, but its duration is suspect, and he knows it.
This is a man who is easily swayed by temptation when his cold, hard ride offers an attractive detour. He lives in the moment–and for the moment, at least, he is content.
Of all the songs on Human Touch, “Cross My Heart” is the song Bruce has played the least in concert. Even “Pony Boy” has had more outings. Count yourself fortunate if you caught one of its only two performances (both in 1992), but doubly so if you caught the second instead of the first.
Bruce debuted “Cross My Heart” at a homecoming show in East Rutherford on July 31, 1992, in an arrangement very close to the one on the album.
Bruce’s second and final performance to date was the special one, however. At Nassau Coliseum that fall, Bruce performed “Cross My Heart” in a moody and acoustic arrangement.
With just Roy on keyboards and Bruce on guitar and harmonica (with a solo that Bruce would one day lift for “Blood Brothers“). Bruce’s grey lyrics get a chance to breathe, and the song gains a depth (murky as it may be) that it never achieves on record.
“Cross My Heart” is one of the stronger songs on Human Touch, as well as its most overlooked, even by its author. Especially in its acoustic arrangement, it deserves more consideration than it receives.
Cross My Heart
Recorded: September 1989 – March 1991
Released: Human Touch (1992)
First performed: July 31, 1992 (East Rutherford, NJ)
Last performed: November 10, 1992 (Uniondale, NY)
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Adding this to my list of “Springsteen songs about or featuring oral sex.” Rosalita, For You, Red-Headed Woman, Reno, Pilgrim in the Temple of Love, The Fuse, Secret Garden – am I forgetting anything? So far we’ve got four songs involving blowjobs and four involving cunnilingus, so that’s a nice equal distribution.
Ah, you caught the one in “For You.” Always surprises me how few people get that… must be the beach decoy in the previous line.
And that wasn’t even the line I was thinking of! I was just thinking of “nursery mouth.”
HI Ken…nice translation…my take of it is a little less Freudian; while I agree there is a lot of romance in the first two verses, the last two is quite a switch: The narrator feels wronged or cheated on as adults must iknow wrong from right and never lie…the result is like Elvis Costello’s My Aim is true, where the narrator is a jealous murderer, and the final cross of my heart is over the lover’s dead body or grave.