Dancing In The Dark

Dancing In The Dark is for Springsteen what The Fall of the House of Usher was for Poe. Springsteen and Poe are literary homeboys, in two different art forms, on account they both disguise the overall message of much of their work. The reader must consciously take note of what is truly being said, underneath the layers of their craftsmanship.

Dancing In The Dark is Bruce at his melancholy brilliance; his impassioned outcry to search for some meaning, while around him, his life is a deteriorating wasteland. This was exactly the way it was for him in the early to middle 1980’s. He abhorred himself (...I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face...) because his struggle for perfection is, well, a struggle.

What Bruce is doing here is NOTHING that all of us haven't experienced before. Underneath the disco/pop dance track is a confession of Bruce's dark and moody personality. It is not necessary to be a fan for Bruce’s writing in order to appreciate what he is going through. This can be any one of us at any given time in our lives. This song measures up to Bruce's great standard, with the best of them. It is one of the most highly misunderstood and underappreciated of all of his songs. It is misunderstood, by even diehard Bruce fans, because of the upbeat synth in the music. It is underappreciated because most people think it is a happy song. The music is fun. The video is beautiful and exciting and colorful. On the contrary, Bruce is extremely desperate for something good to happen in his personal life. He later confessed that at the time, he did not have a life. He only had a work life. (...I'm sick of sittin' ‘round here trying to write this book).

He is reaching out for companionship. All the while, his soul is tortured by life's implications, failed personal relationships, isolation and despair. And so, he is, in effect ‘dancing in the dark’ or scrambling around in a dark world where there appears to be no meaning. His search and constant struggle for meaning finds him asking for someone to "give him just one look", but really hopes for human contact. Bruce touches on this theme on all kinds of songs. Years later, after his failed marriage, he will write Human Touch, another song filled with melancholia.

Bruce has been searching for meaning and redemption since the beginning of his career, through all of his work. But, it wasn't until The River album (1980), where he came to the realization that his self-imposed isolation had to end for him to connect and have a real relationship with someone. That realization gained momentum with Dancing In The Dark, and hit its peak on the Human Touch album. The song Human Touch is an extension of "Dancing".

At the ripe old age of 29, Bruce writes the song Cadillac Ranch; a song that is metaphorically about dying (“…when I die throw my body in the back and drive me to the junkyard in my Cadillac”). Over the next few years, into his early 30’s, Bruce has an increased worry about getting older and dying. In “Dancing”, Bruce writes...."You sit around getting older...", just as in Glory Days, he is talking about the passage of time and the ticking of the clock.

So, he's not making deep connections with people, his work is all he has, and in his eyes, even that isn't going well, because his manager, Jon Landau, told him to write a hit song, after Bruce turned-in no less than 60 songs for his Born In The U.S.A. album. Bruce yelled, "You want a hit song, you write it!" But, Bruce wrote it. He wrote it that very night, in a matter of minutes. Alone in his hotel room, he penned one of his most personal and deepest songs. A song filled with isolation and despair. But, he masks the song with a brilliant Top 10 dance track. Though, don't let the synthesizer and electric drumming fool you. It's a very dark and brooding song, with an element of self-hate.

If you are not familiar with The Fall of the House of Usher, try reading it with this song in mind. Thematically, both works of art are, in essence, the same. Existentially, both artists struggle for meaning and purpose while their lives are in upheaval. In The Fall of the House of Usher, Roderick Usher invites his unnamed friend to spend a period of time with him at his house, to play music, paint, read. His subconscious reason for inviting the friend over to the home is to avoid the feelings of despair that are slowly destroying his soul. All the while, the house is crumbling down around them. This is a metaphor, of course; just Poe’s way of symbolizing Usher's soul. ("Man I ain't getting nowhere. I'm just living in a dump like this"...was Bruce's crumbling house in Usher). It's really quite amazing, because I highly doubt that Bruce thought of Poe while writing this song. Yet, the two are coming from the same deep, dark place.

As I said, Bruce does this in ALL KINDS of songs. There are so many continuing sagas to Bruce's life thru his songs. They are NOT just pop rock songs. They are the fingerprints to his life.