Atlantic City (song)

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"Atlantic City"

Single by Bruce Springsteen
from the album Nebraska
Released	1982
Format	7"
Recorded	1982
Genre	Acoustic
Length	4:00
Label	Columbia Records CBS 2794 (UK, 7")
Producer(s)	Bruce Springsteen
Chart positions
#15 (UK)
Bruce Springsteen singles chronology
"Cadillac Ranch" (UK) (1981)	"Atlantic City" (UK) (1982)	"Open All Night" (UK) (1982)

Atlantic City is a song written and recorded by rock musician Bruce Springsteen, which first appeared on Springsteen's 1982 solo guitar album Nebraska, which is generally considered one of Springsteen's darker albums musically.

1 History
2 Music video
3 Live performances
4 Covers
5 Sources
6 External links

[edit] History

Released in United Kingdom as a single (with "Mansion on the Hill" as b-side), it reached #15. The song was not released as a single in the United States.

The song depicts a young couple's romantic escape to the New Jersey city Atlantic City, but also wrestles with the inevitability of death as the man in the relationship intends to take a job as a hitman once arriving in the city, a fact he keeps secret from his female partner ("Honey, last night I met this guy and I'm gonna do a little favor for him."). The opening lines of "Atlantic City" reference mafia violence in nearby Philadelphia, with Springsteen singing: "Well they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night, now they blew up his house too." (The "chicken man" was a mafia boss named Philip Testa, who was killed by a bomb planted at his house in Philadelphia in March 1981.) The song also references widespread uncertainty regarding gambling during its early years in Atlantic City and its promises to resurrect the city. This uncertainty and the man's uncertainty about taking the less-than-savory job are echoed in the lyrics "Everything dies, baby, that's a fact, but maybe everything that dies some day comes back."

The song version is included on his 1995 Greatest Hits album and on the 2003 compilation album The Essential Bruce Springsteen.

[edit] Music video

A music video was produced for "Atlantic City", which received some play on MTV in the United States. This was a non-representational video, meaning Springsteen did not appear in it. The video featured stark, black and white images of the city, which had not yet undergone its later transformation, and was still rather bleak and depressed.

[edit] Live performances

From the Born in the U.S.A. Tour on, "Atlantic City" has made fairly regular appearances in Springsteen's band concerts, with a soft-hard-cycle arrangement very similar to that of "Darkness on the Edge of Town". Such live versions appear on Springsteen's In Concert/MTV Plugged (1993) and Live in New York City (2001) albums. For the 2006 Bruce Springsteen with The Seeger Sessions Band Tour, "Atlantic City" was drastically rearranged and featured multiple outros.