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Atlantic City (song)

"Atlantic City"
Bruce Springsteen - Atlantic city.jpg
Single by Bruce Springsteen
from the album Nebraska
Released 1982
Format 7"
Recorded 1982
Genre Folk rock
Length 4:00
Label Columbia
CBS 2794 (UK, 7")
Writer(s) Bruce Springsteen
Producer(s) Bruce Springsteen
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 Bruce Springsteen, which first appeared on Springsteen's 1982 solo album Nebraska. Springsteen has often played the song in a full band arrangement in concert.

Springsteen wrote in his Greatest Hits sleeve notes that he recorded the track in his bedroom "for $1,050 (the cost of the four-track Tascam recorder), mixed through an old Gibson guitar unit to a beat box."

The song depicts a young couple's escape to Atlantic City, New Jersey, but it also wrestles with the inevitability of death as the man in the relationship intends to take a job in organized crime upon arriving in the city. The opening lines of "Atlantic City" refer to 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 Philadelphia crime family mafia boss Philip Testa, who was killed by a bomb planted at his Philadelphia house in March 1981). The song evokes the widespread uncertainty regarding gambling during its early years in Atlantic City and its promises to resurrect the city, as well as the young man's uncertainty about taking the less-than-savory job: "Everything dies, baby, that's a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back."

Although the song came out around the same time as the film of the same name, the two works are unrelated.

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

"8 Years", a 2006 episode of the television series Cold Case, was based around nine Springsteen songs, with "Atlantic City" played during its climactic murder scene. In 2012 following Hurricane Sandy, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie quoted the song's chorus during a cameo on Saturday Night Live.


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