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Be True

"Be True"
Single by Bruce Springsteen
from the album Tracks
A-side "Fade Away"
Released 1981
Format 7" single
Recorded July 18, 1979 at The Power Station, New York
Genre Rock
Length 3:43
Label Columbia
Writer(s) Bruce Springsteen
Producer(s) Jon Landau, Bruce Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt
Bruce Springsteen singles chronology
"Hungry Heart"/"Held Up Without a Gun"
(1980)
"Fade Away/Be True"
(1981)
"Dancing in the Dark"/"Pink Cadillac"
(1984)

"Be True" is a song by Bruce Springsteen. It was recorded on July 18, 1979 at The Power Station in New York in one of the early recording sessions for Bruce Springsteen's album The River. It was not released on the album, but in 1981 it was released as the B-side to the single release of "Fade Away, a song taken from The River album. According to Springsteen, "Be True" was left off The River album in favor of the song "Crush on You", a decision he has a hard time understanding in retrospect. Springsteen was already second guessing his decision to exclude "Be True" from The River before the album was even released.

"Be True" is a mid-tempo pop song. It had been slated to be included on The Ties That Bind, a single album Springsteen had submitted to his record company in 1979 but then pulled back to be replaced by The River. Music critic Clinton Heylin considers it one of the "centrepieces" of the would-be album.AllMusic critic Mark Deming notes that unlike many songs in which movies are used "as a symbol of people’s hopes and dreams," in "Be True" those dreams "stand in the way of a better reality." Its lyrics, which "contrast the romance of life in movies with the loneliness of real life" fit with one of the major themes of The River, that of the "conflict between dreams and reality." According to author Jane Skinner Sawyers, the lyrics of the refrain. "You be true to me/And I'll be true to you" ""sum up Springsteen's philosophy." Sawyer considers that its sweetness and tenderness would have made it a top hit had it been released in the 1960s.

"Be True" went through several versions before its final incarnation. The original version, recorded in the first half of 1979, was titled "Mary Lou," which was intended as a "really catchy three minute pop tune" which "moved lyrically" and "linked together in a certain way." In "Mary Lou", the singer sings to a woman he is interested in that she should not sell herself cheap but rather "be true to [herself] in some fashion." According to Springsteen, the theme was "how do you find yourself through the falseness of some of those things." The second version of the song, officially "Little White Lies," but also known as "White Lies" and "Don't Do It To Me," was recorded in June 1979. It contains an intro similar to that on the Rolling Stones' single "Paint It, Black." Heylin claims that this version "explodes the moment the drums kick in" and that drummer Max Weinberg regards this version as one of his favorite E Street Band songs. The final incarnation of "Be True" was recorded on July 18, 1979.


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