In Harlem late last night
And the Magic Rat drove his sleek machine
Over the Jersey state line
Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge
Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain
The Rat pulls into town, rolls up his pants
Together they take a stab at romance and disappear down Flamingo Lane
Well, the Maximum Lawman run down Flamingo
Chasing the Rat and the barefoot girl
And the kids around here look just like shadows
Always quiet, holding hands
From the churches to the jails
Tonight all is silence in the world
As we take our stand
Down in Jungleland
The midnight gangs assembled
And picked a rendezvous for the night
They'll meet 'neath that giant Exxon sign
That brings this fair city light
Man, there's an opera out on the Turnpike
There's a ballet being fought out in the alley
Until the local cop's cherry top
Rips this holy night
The street's alive as secret debts are paid
Contacts made, they vanished unseen
Kids flash guitars just like switchblades
Hustling for the record machine
The hungry and the hunted
Explode into rock 'n' roll bands
That faced off against each other out in the street
Down in Jungleland
In the parking lot
The visionaries dress in the latest rage
Inside, the backstreet girls
Are dancing to the records that the DJ plays
Lonely hearted lovers struggle in dark corners
Desperate as the night moves on
With just one look and a whisper
They're gone
Beneath the city, two hearts beat
Soul engines running through a night so tender
In a bedroom locked, in whispers of soft
Refusal, and then surrender
In the tunnels uptown,
The Rat's own dream guns him down
The shots echo down them hallways in the night
No one watches when the ambulance pulls away
Or as the girl shuts out the bedroom light
Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz
Between what's flesh and what's fantasy
And the poets down here don't write nothing at all
They just stand back and let it all be
And in the quick of the night, they reach for their moment
And try to make an honest stand
But they wind up wounded, not even dead
Tonight in Jungleland
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American rock singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Nicknamed "the Boss", he has released 21 studio albums during a career spanning six decades, most of which feature his backing band, the E Street Band. Springsteen is a pioneer of heartland rock, a genre combining mainstream rock music with poetic and socially conscious lyrics that feature narratives primarily concerning working class American life. He is known for his descriptive lyrics and energetic concerts, which sometimes last over four hours.
Springsteen released his first two albums, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, in 1973. Although both were well-received by critics, neither earned him a large audience. He then changed his style and achieved worldwide popularity with Born to Run (1975). This was followed by Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) and The River (1980); The River was Springsteen's first album to top the Billboard 200 chart. After the solo effort Nebraska (1982), he reunited with his E Street Band for Born in the U.S.A. (1984), which became his most commercially successful album and the 23rd-best selling album of all time as of 2024. All seven singles from Born in the U.S.A. reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, including the title track. Springsteen mostly hired session musicians for the recording of his next three albums, Tunnel of Love (1987), Human Touch (1992), and Lucky Town (1992). He reassembled the E Street Band for Greatest Hits (1995), then solo recorded an acoustic album The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995), and the EP Blood Brothers (1996).
Seven years after releasing The Ghost of Tom Joad, the longest gap between any of his studio albums, Springsteen released The Rising (2002), which he dedicated to the victims of the September 11 attacks. He released two more folk albums, Devils & Dust (2005) and We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006), followed by two more albums with the E Street Band, Magic (2007) and Working on a Dream (2009). The next two albums, Wrecking Ball (2012) and High Hopes (2014), topped album charts worldwide. From 2017 to 2018, and again in 2021, Springsteen performed a critically acclaimed show Springsteen on Broadway, in which he performed some of his songs and told stories from his 2016 autobiography; an album version from the Broadway performances was released in 2018. He then released the solo Western Stars (2019), Letter to You (2020) with the E Street Band, and a solo covers album Only the Strong Survive (2022). Letter to You reached No. 2 in the U.S., making Springsteen the first artist to release a Top 5 album across six consecutive decades.
One of the album era's most prominent musicians, Springsteen has sold more than 71 million albums in the U.S. and over 140 million worldwide, making him the 27th best-selling music artist of all time as of 2024. He has earned 20 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, an Academy Award, and a Special Tony Award. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009, was named MusiCares person of the year in 2013, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2016 and the National Medal of Arts by President Joe Biden in 2023. In 2010, Rolling Stone ranked him 23rd on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", which described him as being "the embodiment of rock & roll".
