“Jersey Girl” by Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen didn't write "Jersey Girl", but he sings it like it was always meant to be his. Tom Waits wrote it and recorded it first, on his 1980 album Heartattack and Vine, as a love song for Kathleen Brennan, the woman who had been living in New Jersey and would become his wife; his arrangement leaned on the seaside soul of "Under the Boardwalk".

Springsteen cut his version with the E Street Band and put it out in 1984 on the flip side of the single "Cover Me", a B-side with more heart than plenty of A-sides that year, his voice all Saturday-night warmth over a rolling, easygoing band.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.