Roll of the Dice: The Power of Prayer

“We all have our own ways of praying. I restricted mine to 3 minutes and a 45 rpm record. The power of pure pop, the beautiful simplicity of melody, a complete character study in a matter of minutes. Life in 180 seconds or less. If you get it right, it has the power of prayer.”  –Bruce Springsteen, Letter to You (2020)

It took almost fifty years and twenty studio albums to get there, but hiding in the center of Letter to You is the truest summation of Bruce Springsteen’s prolific songwriting career.

Is it his best song? No, and it certainly won’t rank amongst his most popular work either.

But if we’re looking for a three minute distillation of what Bruce has been trying to tell us since the beginning, we’ll find it in “The Power of Prayer.”

Despite its title, “The Power of Prayer” isn’t a religious song–it’s a spiritual one, and there’s a difference. This is a song about the transcendent power of music, its ability to touch our soul, connect our hearts, ignite our passions, and reveal our spirit.

“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve kind of become a spiritual songwriter just by nature, by the things I’ve grown interested in,” Bruce told The New York Times last year. “At the end of the day I’m writing about my own spiritual life, and I’m addressing yours. We make a lot of music that addresses the soul, that’s the nature of our band. Whether I heard, as I say on the record, Ben E. King’s voice, or The Drifters, some of the otherworldly doo-wop of the early ’60s — I just find a great essence of spirit in them. It was something that I wanted to communicate when I wrote my own music. It’s not sort of dogmatic or overblown, there’s no religion in it. There’s just spirit, I hope.”

Bruce may have grown more intentional about it as he’s aged, but he’s been showing us that there’s spirit in his music since his very first album. Can you feel it?

Bruce constructed “The Power of Prayer” in the mold of the songs he sings about. It’s a three-and-a-half minute nostalgic callback to the R&B singles of the sixties, with lyrical subtlety that’s offset by an E Street Band performance dripping with emotion from the nostalgic opening bars of Roy Bittan’s piano intro to the caution-thrown-to-wind bridge to that tender final verse.

“The Power of Prayer” boasts the strongest arrangement on Letter to You and one of Bruce’s best in recent years. It allows him to take an understated approach with his lyrics, trusting that the music will inform us about what the song is truly about.

Dreamy afternoon ‘neath the summer sun
We’d lie by the lake till the evening comes
I run my fingers through your sun-streaked hair
Baby that’s the power of prayer

Summer nights, summer’s in the air
I stack the tables with the chairs
It’s closing time and you’re standing there
Baby that’s the power of prayer

At no point in those first two verses does Bruce tell us what he’s referring to as the power of prayer. It’s not until the final verse that he explicitly connects the dots, but we still sense it at first listen.

The narrator and his love interest lie by the lake listening to music, and it’s that soundtrack that makes that moment indelible in his memory. He closes up the bar where he works as the radio plays in the background, and it’s that song that heightens and preserves that moment.

We all have those magic moments, scenes we can recall vividly decades later, and always with a soundtrack. That’s the power of prayer.

The bridge–both sides of it–spurs the narrator to go all in on love, with a clever card game metaphor (holding hearts, playing pairs). Bruce is paying homage to the romantic pop songs of his youth, but there’s a subtext at work as well:

It’s a fixed game without any rules
An empty table on a ship of fools
I’m holding hearts, I play the pair
Darling it’s just the power of prayer

It’s a fixed game without any rules
An empty table on a ship of fools
I’m holding hearts, I play the pair
I’m going all in ’cause I don’t care
They say that love, love comes and goes
But darling what, what do they know
I’m reaching for heaven, we’ll make it there
Darling it’s just the power of prayer
Baby it’s just the power of prayer
Darling it’s just the power of prayer

That passage works equally well as the songwriter’s manifesto as it does the narrator’s love letter.

The final verse is the reveal, and Bruce’s choice of songs is a deliberate wink.

Last call, the bouncer shuts the door
“This Magic Moment” drifts across the floor
As Ben E. King’s voice fills the air
Baby that’s the power of prayer

Music can elevate even the most prosaic of moments into the realm of magic. Is there anything else in life with that kind of power?

The Oxford Dictionary defines spirit as “the nonphysical part of a person which is the seat of emotions and character; the soul.” Great songwriters imbue their work with their emotions and character, and when we hear it and recognize it, their spirit connects with our own. There’s no method of communication or communion more powerful.

Bruce figured that out early on, and that’s why we connect to his music on such a deep, visceral level.

“The Power of Prayer” may never be one of the songs Bruce is remembered for (except for in Italy, perhaps, where the song went to #1 and still receives frequent radio airplay), but the power of prayer is the reason why we’ll remember him at all.

Update 1/1/2024: Bruce finally debuted “The Power of Prayer” at Stand Up For Heroes last November. Here’s that debut performance.

The Power of Prayer
Recorded: November 2019
Released: Letter to You (2020)
First performed: November 6, 2023(New York City, NY)
Last performed: November 6, 2023 (New York City, NY)

Looking for your favorite Bruce song? Check our full index here. New entries every week!