"Racing in the Street" is a song by Bruce Springsteen from his 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town. In the original vinyl format, it was the last song of side one of the album. The song has been called Springsteen's best song by several commentators, including the authors of The New Rolling Stone Album Guide.

The song is a near-dirge-like ballad that begins with a slow, graceful and elegant introduction by pianist Roy Bittan.

The narrator has a dead end job, but his pride and joy is his '69 Chevy that he and his partner built, and race across the northeast United States to win money gambling against similar racers. The first verse is accompanied only by piano and opens with the narrator singing that:

Max Weinberg's drum rim taps signal a somewhat faster pace for the second verse. Midway through, Danny Federici's organ later joins in, combining to form what writer Robert Santelli termed "one beautiful, seamless sound". The organ entrance signals one of the lyric's main points, that the narrator divides the world into two types of people: those who "give up living / And start dying little by little, piece by piece," and those like himself who find something to live for, which in his case is going racing in the streets.

However, after an instrumental break the third verse unexpectedly takes place with again only piano behind it. The girlfriend the protagonist apparently won from a competitor in one of his races does not share his dream of going racing in the streets. Instead, she "stares into the night with the eyes of one who hates for just being born." But the story ends on a possibly hopeful note, as the narrator attempts to find salvation in the closing lines:

Other views of the closing have been grimmer. In any case, the song concludes with a moving fugue-like instrumental coda with Bittan's piano, Federici's organ and Max Weinberg's drums intertwining.

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