“At certain moments, time is obliterated in the presence of somebody you love; there seems to be a transcendence of time in love.
The normal markers of the day, the month, the year, as you get older those very fearsome markers… in the presence of love, they lose some of their power.”
— Bruce Springsteen to Mark Hagen, The Guardian, January 18, 2009
In the end, we have nothing but time.
And time is funny: if we squander it, the days remaining seem perilously few and menacing. If we spend it well, the days left seem like a veritable kingdom.
“Kingdom of Days” is the kind of song only someone with fewer tomorrows than yesterdays could write, and only someone thoroughly content with their todays. And only someone lucky enough to have found the right person to spend those days with.
It’s the linchpin of Working on a Dream, Bruce Springsteen’s first album to embrace the theme of aging, released in the waning days of his sixth decade on the planet. In years to come, he’d write plenty of songs that deal with the loss that comes with aging. “Kingdom of Days” stands out as one of his only songs that focuses on time’s gifts.
It’s also one of Bruce’s very best love songs, focusing on the rewards of love rather than (only) its rush. Most reviews I’ve read label “Kingdom of Days” as an ode to life-long love, obviously informed by Bruce’s marriage to Patti Scialfa. The songwriter himself called it “something you write after having a long, long life with somebody” in a Rolling Stone interview in 2009.
But it really isn’t. To appreciate “Kingdom of Days” does not require one to have a decades-long romantic foundation–in fact, there’s not a single reference to a single yesterday in the entire song.
This is a song about the importance of today; it only requires that you’re with your person now.
With you I don’t hear the minutes ticking by
I don’t feel the hours as they fly
I don’t see the summer as it wanes
Just a subtle change of light upon your face
Walk away, walk away, walk away, walk away
This is our kingdom of days
The first couplet captures the time-altering early days of love–how we lose track of the world as our foreground focus locks completely onto our new favorite.
It also describes the experience of our later years with that person by our side. It’s a known phenomenon that our sense of time accelerates as we age; it’s why time seems to fly faster with each passing year. But when we spend those autumn years (and yes, Bruce sets his song in autumn deliberately–an on-the-nose facet of an otherwise subtle song) with our true love, time slows down. We notice more, regret less, and take deep satisfaction in the today before us.
If time takes its toll around us, we notice it only in the gentle, gradual changes in our partner, whose beauty never wavers. As Bruce told Hagen, “[‘Kingdom of Days’] also deals with the deterioration of your physical body. It drifts away… but beauty remains. It’s about two people and you visit that place in each other’s face.”
I watch the sun as it rises and sets
I watch the moon trace its arc with no regrets
My jacket ’round your shoulders, the falling leaves
The wet grass on our backs as the autumn breeze drifts through the trees
On first listen, it might seem like the two verses of “Kingdom of Days” contradict each other: in the first verse, our narrator is oblivious to time passing; in the second, he traces the course of the day. So which is it?
There’s no contradiction. Our narrator is is oblivious to time passing him by because he’s living in an ever-present today. I watch the moon trace its arc with no regrets. We should all be so lucky to need nothing of tomorrow because we have all we need to be happy right now.
All the while, Bruce sings some of his warmest vocals on record against a lushly orchestrated backing track that wouldn’t sound out of place on Western Stars. As the song arches toward its bridge, our lovers come together, subtly informing us that it’s not just love but also passion that proves immune to time.
I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I do
You whisper “then prove it, then prove it, then prove it to me baby blue”
Love and passion inoculate us against time’s terror and thievery. Our bodies may decay, our minds may slow. But when we see how ineffective time is on the beauty of our partner’s face, we don’t fear its impact on our own.
And I count my blessings that you’re mine for always
We laugh beneath the covers
and count the wrinkles and the grays
We laugh at and celebrate each new wrinkle and rob time of its power to frighten. That place we visit in each other’s face, Bruce tells us, is “not just the past and today… you visit the tomorrows in the person’s face now.” And those tomorrows seem pretty darn inviting.
If there’s a moral to “Kingdom of Days” it’s that it matters who you spend your days with. Life is short, but it’s also long. Our lives are a kingdom of days, and heavy is the head that wears the crown. It helps to have someone to share it with.
With the right person beside us, a kingdom can become a garden, with each day bearing fruit sweeter than the day before.
Sing away, sing away, sing away, sing away
Sing away, sing away, my darling, we’ll sing away
This is our kingdom of days
In the end, we have nothing but time. Spend it wisely, with the right person.
“Kingdom of Days” was a nightly staple during the early months of the Working on a Dream Tour, one of the rare album tracks to survive past the opening few weeks.
By the summer, though, it had disappeared from the set list, never to return.
Never, that is, except for a pair of acoustic performances in the spring of 2014. The latter of the two–and Bruce’s last “Kingdom of Days” performance to date–was from his show with Joe Grushecky in Pittsburgh just after the High Hopes Tour ended. He was slightly subdued that night–quite possibly due to some pain medication from an injury toward the end of the tour–but his voice was in stunning form.
Watch this performance all the way through to hear Bruce channel his inner Orbison in one of his warmest vocal performances on-stage in recent years.
Bonus: the DVD that accompanied Working on a Dream contained some behind-the-scenes footage from the recording sessions. Here’s a look at the creation of “Kingdom of Days.”
Kingdom of Days
Recorded: Early 2008
Released: Working on a Dream (2009)
First performed: March 24, 2009 (Asbury Park, NJ)
Last performed: May 22, 2014 (Pittsburgh, PA)
Looking for your favorite Bruce song? Check our full index. New entries every week!
I love this song. I’ve never quite understood the “walk away” part of the lyrics. What are your thoughts?
He’s not saying “walk away” in the sense of walking away from something. The “away” means freely, without care. As in “sing away” later in the song.