"Open All Night" | ||||
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Single by Bruce Springsteen | ||||
from the album Nebraska | ||||
Released | November 22, 1982 | |||
Format | 7" | |||
Recorded | June 23, 1982 | |||
Genre | Folk rock, rock and roll | |||
Length | 2:58 | |||
Label | Columbia | |||
Songwriter(s) | Bruce Springsteen | |||
Bruce Springsteen singles chronology | ||||
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Nebraska track listing | ||||
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"Open All Night" is a song written and recorded by rock musician Bruce Springsteen, which first appeared on Springsteen's 1982 solo album Nebraska.
Of the 10 songs on Nebraska, "Open All Night" is the only one to feature an electric guitar. With a Chuck Berry-style guitar riff, the song tells the story of an unnamed narrator's all-night drive across industrial New Jersey to reach his girl, Wanda, whom he met when she was a waitress at the Route 60 Bob's Big Boy.
"Open All Night" was released as a single in the UK, backed by "The Big Payback", but did not chart. It was also released as a single in The Netherlands and Spain. Though never released as a single in the United States, it garnered enough album oriented rock airplay to reach #22 on the U.S. Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
The song shares a common lyrical structure and themes with two other Springsteen songs. The first is "State Trooper," also found on the Nebraska album. The other was "Living on the Edge of the World", recorded in 1979 but released as part of the four-disk box set Tracks in 1998.
Springsteen performed this song infrequently until the Sessions Band Tour of 2006, when it was transformed into an eight-minute "show-stopping rave-up" whose already surreal lyrics were made more strange by being rapped against a big band swing arrangement and a pseudo-Andrews Sisters female backing vocal trio. This is the version that appears on the Live in Dublin CD and DVD.