“Sometimes you’ve been too beat up or haven’t healed enough of the fear out of you to know a good thing when you’ve found it. Sometimes you just gravitate to the pain. It’s what you’re used to. It’s how you recognize yourself. It feels like home. It feels more familiar to you than love. So that’s where you go.
You don’t know how to hold on to love, but you know how to hold on to hurt.”
— Bruce Springsteen, Western Stars (2019)
“I wrote this song quickly at the kitchen table one morning,” Bruce explained by way of introduction in Western Stars. “It’s just about being lost on the highway of life. Lost is something i’m good at writing about.”
With due respect to the author, I think he misdirects a bit. “Somewhere North of Nashville” is less about being lost on life’s highway and more about the wrong turn that led him off-road.
At one minute and fifty-two seconds, “Somewhere North of Nashville” is the shortest song on Western Stars and one of his shortest in his entire catalog. But as with “Camilla Horn” a couple of days ago (short songs seem to be our theme this week), Bruce demonstrates that it needn’t take more than two minutes to bring a character to life.
The narrator of “Somewhere North of Nashville” is an itinerant musician who prioritized his career above his love life… not unlike a certain songwriter during his early years. Thinking he could have both, he made a go of it in Nashville, making the rounds of the clubs and making a home with his love.
But when his career prospects didn’t pan out the way he’d hoped he found himself faced with a choice: settle down with his lover and give up his ambitions, or take to the road in search of better fortunes.
He chose the latter, and Bruce’s lyrics and world-weary vocals are clearly tinged with regret.
Came into town with a pocketful of songs
I made the rounds but I didn’t last long
Now I’m out on this highway with a bone-cold chill
Somewhere north of Nashville
I lie awake in the middle of the night
Making a list of things that I didn’t do right
With you at the top of a long page filled
Here somewhere north of Nashville
For the deal I made the price was strong
I traded you for this song
We woke each morning with hearts filled
A bluebird of love on the windowsill
Now the heart’s unsteady and the night is still
All I’ve got’s this melody and time to kill
Here somewhere north of Nashville
Our narrator made his choice and lost. He lost his love, and while he may have gained the working life of a touring musician, it’s an empty one. In the still and quiet of the night, he has nothing but time to contemplate the price he paid for his working life, and the implication is that the price was too steep.
We don’t know whether he’s ten weeks down the road or ten years, but we do know he’s unable to move on. He can’t let go of the regret, the loss, the sacrifice. He can’t enjoy whatever small joys the road of life might bring his way.
His heart is with his ex in Nashville, but the rest of him is in exile… somewhere north.
Bruce has only performed “Somewhere North of Nashville” live once, but at least it was for the cameras. In the film version of Western Stars, Bruce hews closely to the album arrangement, but there’s a moment where the visual medium helps him transcend.
During the key bridge, Bruce catches the camera and his gaze meets ours just as he says the words, I traded you for this song. And in that moment, we feel the full force of his character’s sadness and regret. It’s one of the most powerful moments in the entire film.
Somewhere North of Nashville
Recorded: Unknown
Released: Western Stars (2019)
First performed: April 2019 (Colts Neck, NJ)
Last performed: April 2019 (Colts Neck, NJ)
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A nice little post for a fine little song. Thanks for the post; I’ve paid this song little mind, despite loving the album as a whole, but having read through your “Moonlight Motel”, “Tucson Train”, and “Hitch Hikin'” posts tonight, I figured I’d also check out this one real quick before bed, expecting it to be short and hoping that maybe something in the lyrics would grab me at least a bit more. And sure enough, it has; my main thought here is that the story you describe here is quite reminiscent of “The Promise”, an interesting connection I didn’t expect.
The context is different, but if a line like “I traded you for this song […] All I got’s this melody and time to kill” appeared on “The Promise”, it wouldn’t feel out of place at all, so considering your point about the semi-autobiographical nature of the song, I wonder if that era and its regret part of what Bruce was drawing on here.
In any case, both songs find narrators grappling with the broken hearts that stand as the price they paid to break away and so serve as a rare sequel song to the more “classical” Springsteen narratives of escapism… and, in this song’s case, the even rarer case of one outside of the Darkness sessions.
Similar, too, to how you (and others have) painted “Moonlight Motel” as arguably a “Thunder Road” sequel. “The Promise” is *explicitly* a “Thunder Road” sequel, and this song could basically have the exact same narrator. Interesting stuff.