Bruce Springsteen lyrics argument - is it "waves" or "sways"?
"It’s delightful that there are still questions Siri and Alexa can’t answer, and that people argue fervently about rock lyrics from more than 45 years ago" - LA Times writes in an article about the Internet argument over a Bruce Springsteen lyric. The song is 'Thunder Road', it begins 'Born to Run', the 1975 album that made Springsteen a star, and it's the opening lyrics - “The screen door slams, Mary’s dress waves”, or is it "sways"? The problem is, Springsteen isn't sure himself. In the original album gatefold design of 'Born to Run', the lyrics are printed “Mary’s dress waves”, but on page 220 of his best-selling 'Born to Run' memoir, Springsteen says “‘the screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways’ — that’s a good opening line”. Or maybe Boss just doesn't want the story to end, as he admits in his Broadway show: “I come from a boardwalk town where everything is tinged with just a bit of fraud. So am I. I’ve never seen the inside of a factory, and yet, it’s all I’ve ever written about… I made it all up”. Springsteen's longtime manager Jon Landau settled the matter in the New Yorker - “The word is ‘sways. That’s the way he wrote it in his original notebooks, that’s the way he sang it on 'Born to Run', in 1975, that’s the way he has always sung it at thousands of shows, and that’s the way he sings it right now on Broadway. Any typos in official Bruce material will be corrected”.
