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It's cloudy out in Pittsburgh
It's rainin' in Saigon
Snow's fallin' all across the Michigan line
Well she sits by the light of her Christmas tree
With the radio softly on
Thinkin' how a good man is so hard to find
Well once she had a fella
Once she was somebody's girl
And she gave all she had that one last time
Now there's a little girl asleep in the back room
She's gonna have to tell about the meanness in this world
And how a good man is so hard to find
Well there's pictures on the table by her bed
Him in his dress greens and her in her wedding white
She remembers how the world was the day he left
And now how that world is dead
And a good man is so hard to find
She got no time now for Casanovas
Yeah those days are gone
She don't want that anymore, she's made up her mind
Just somebody to hold her
As the night gets on
When a good man is so hard to find
Well she shuts off the TV
And without a word
Into bed she climbs
Well she thinks how it was all so wasted
And how expendable their dreams all were
When a good man was so hard to find
Well it's cloudy out in Pittsburgh...
It's rainin' in Saigon
Snow's fallin' all across the Michigan line
Well she sits by the light of her Christmas tree
With the radio softly on
Thinkin' how a good man is so hard to find
Well once she had a fella
Once she was somebody's girl
And she gave all she had that one last time
Now there's a little girl asleep in the back room
She's gonna have to tell about the meanness in this world
And how a good man is so hard to find
Well there's pictures on the table by her bed
Him in his dress greens and her in her wedding white
She remembers how the world was the day he left
And now how that world is dead
And a good man is so hard to find
She got no time now for Casanovas
Yeah those days are gone
She don't want that anymore, she's made up her mind
Just somebody to hold her
As the night gets on
When a good man is so hard to find
Well she shuts off the TV
And without a word
Into bed she climbs
Well she thinks how it was all so wasted
And how expendable their dreams all were
When a good man was so hard to find
Well it's cloudy out in Pittsburgh...
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Actually, there is a connection. She influence him on his scaled-down songwriting on Nebraska. Springsteen, for instance, used that "meanness" concept. In some article I read that Springsteen said in an interview:
"I was interested in writing kind of smaller than I had been, writing with just detail." And he connects a sudden transformation in his songwriting style at the time with "these stories I was reading by Flannery O'Connor," exclaiming to the interviewer, "she's just incredible".
Springsteen also wrote in a letter to Will Percy: "Right prior to the record Nebraska, I was deep into O'Connor." and later on:
"There was something in those stories of hers that I felt captured a certain part of the American character that I was interested in writing about. They were a big, big revelation. She got to the heart of some part of meaness that she never spelled out, because if she spelled it out you wouldn't be getting it. It was always at the core of every one of her stories - the way she left that hole there, that hole that's inside of everybody. There was some dark thing - component of spirituality - that I sensed in her stories, and thath set me off exploring characters of my own."
I guess this song must be seen as some kind of 'homage' to Flannery O'Connor. Besides, see last lines in the second verse: "She's gonna have to tell about the meanness in this world / And how a good man is so hard to find". These are two direct references to O'Connor's work.