"Racing in the Street" is a song by Bruce Springsteen from his 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town. In the original vinyl format, it was the last song of side one of the album. The song has been called Springsteen's best song by several commentators, including the authors of The New Rolling Stone Album Guide.
History
Springsteen started writing "Racing in the Street", shortly after the New Year's Eve 1975 show at the Tower Theatre, Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, along with "Darkness on the Edge of Town" and "The Promise". However, due to legal proceedings with his former manager, recording sessions for his fourth album did not begin until June 1, 1977. According to a song list from May 1977, included in the notebook provided with The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story box set, it was one of the "new songs" for his next album. Sony recording logs show it was first recorded on July 2, 1977 at Atlantic Studios, New York, NY, by Bruce alone at the piano. Under the working title "Dying in the Street", he sang, "Tonight tonight the strips just right, I wanna blow 'em all out of their seats, so come out now everyone And we'll go racing in the street, Yes come on out now little one and we'll go dying in the street, Yes come on out now everyone and we'll go dying in the street, Look at me it's true Baby what else can we do, Racing in the Streets..." According to studio records at both Atlantic and the Record Plant, eight days were devoted to "Racing in the Street" during August 1977, and with a final total of seventeen, the most spent working on any song during the sessions. On August 30 at the Record Plant, the tape that would be used on the Darkness on the Edge of Town album was completed. However, Springsteen was not finished with the song. In late November and early December, he spent five more days working on the "harp version", which circulated for years among bootleggers, and was finally released as "Racing in the Street '78" on The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story. December 9, 1977 was the last day he would record "Racing", although he spent three more days mixing it, March 21–23, 1978.
Structure
The song is a ballad that begins with a slow, graceful and elegant introduction by pianist Roy Bittan.
The narrator has a dead end job, but his pride and joy is his 1969 Chevy that he and his partner built, and race in the northeast section of the state (exactly which state is not mentioned) to win money gambling against similar racers. The first verse is accompanied only by piano and opens with the narrator singing that:
I got a '69 Chevy with a 396
Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor
Max Weinberg's drum rim taps signal a somewhat faster pace for the second verse. Midway through, Danny Federici's organ later joins in, combining to form what writer Robert Santelli termed "one beautiful, seamless sound". The organ entrance signals one of the lyric's main points, that the narrator divides the world into two types of people: those who "give up living / And start dying little by little, piece by piece," and those like himself who find something to live for, which in his case is going racing in the streets.
However, after an instrumental break the third verse unexpectedly takes place with again only piano behind it. The girlfriend, which the protagonist apparently won from a competitor in one of his races, does not share his dream of going racing in the streets. Instead, she "stares into the night with the eyes of one who hates for just being born." But the story ends on a possibly hopeful note, as the narrator attempts to find salvation in the closing lines:
Tonight my baby and me are gonna drive to the sea
And wash these sins off our hands.
Other views of the closing have been grimmer. In any case, the song concludes with a moving fugue-like instrumental coda with Bittan's piano, Federici's organ and Weinberg's drums intertwining.
The chord progression in the choruses and coda is I–IV–ii–IV in the key of F. Springsteen uses the technique of withholding the V chord, which is only heard during the piano introduction and during a later transition; by reducing the chord's influence, the sense of longing or desperation in the song is heightened.