Prove It All Night
| "Prove It All Night" | ||||||||||
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| Single by Bruce Springsteen | ||||||||||
| from the album Darkness on the Edge of Town | ||||||||||
| B-side | "Factory" | |||||||||
| Released | May 23, 1978 | |||||||||
| Format | 7" single | |||||||||
| Recorded | September–October 1977 | |||||||||
| Genre | Rock | |||||||||
| Length | 3:54 | |||||||||
| Label | Columbia | |||||||||
| Writer(s) | Bruce Springsteen | |||||||||
| Producer | Jon Landau, Bruce Springsteen | |||||||||
| Bruce Springsteen singles chronology | ||||||||||
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"Prove It All Night" is the penultimate song on Bruce Springsteen's fourth studio album Darkness on the Edge of Town, and the first single released from it.
The single gained little traction with Top 40 radio stations, reaching only #33 on the Billboard Hot 100; however it gained considerable play on progressive rock and album-oriented rock radio formats.
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[edit] Content
In keeping with a storied tradition of rock songs, these lyrics very effectively equate love with the surrendering of a women's virtue. The protagonist promises to prove his love all night, a vow that can be seen as either opportunistic or youthfully optimistic, depending on one's point of view. Thus it can be experienced as either humorous or sincere, like so many great love songs. Lyrically the song is similar to other Springsteen numbers such as "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" and "Thunder Road".[1] The entire song contains a sense of optimism that the two individuals' quest for love will someday be realized but, at the same time, it seems that the world is closing in on them in that the characters' chances of falling in love are growing more limited as time passes.The song begins with a piano intro played by Roy Bittan. The rhythm guitar work is quite faint, though effectively setting the groove and feel of the song. Following the second stanza is a sax solo which precedes a somewhat intricate-sounding guitar solo by Springsteen.The solo,played quite fast,effectively voices the protagonist's mounting desire to elope.
[edit] Live performance
"Prove It All Night" has been a semi-regular selection in Springsteen and E Street Band concerts since its release. To the Springsteen faithful, by far the most famous arrangement of it occurred during their fabled 1978 Tour, when it was reshaped into an eleven-minute epic with a long, howling guitar-over-piano introduction and a frenetic organ-and-guitar-over-drums outro. Excerpts of one such performance from a July 1, 1978 Berkeley Community Theatre show were heard during a syndicated radio interview with New York disc jockey Dave Herman on the King Biscuit Flower Hour, and this version would become a fan favorite still referred back to decades later; one of the criticisms of Springsteen's 1986 Live/1975-85 box set was that it omitted the 1978 version "Prove It All Night". A live version of the song did finally appear on Springsteen's 2001 release Live in New York City documenting the Reunion Tour,[1] as did a Rising Tour performance on the 2003 Live in Barcelona DVD, but both were in a shorter, more conventional treatment.
[edit] Acclaim
The aggregation of critics' lists at acclaimedmusic.net did not place this song in its list of the top 3000 songs of all time, but rated it as one of the 1980 songs "bubbling under" the top 3000.[2] The song has also been listed as the #6 single of 1978 by Dave Marsh and Kevin Stein and as one of the 7500 most important songs from 1944 through 2000 by Bruce Pollock.[2][3]
[edit] References
- ^ a b Ruhlmann, William. "Prove It All Night allmusic review". allmusic. http://www.allmusic.com/song/t824502. Retrieved 2010-04-11.
- ^ a b "Acclaimed Music Top 3000 songs". 28 May 2009. http://www.acclaimedmusic.net.
- ^ Marsh, D. & Stein, K. (1981). "Top of the Pops: The Best of the Top 40 Singles by Year "Book of Rock Lists"". http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/dmsingles_72_80.htm. Retrieved 2009-05-28.
