Yes, boys and girls, fuzzy and blue grew up in New Jersey, and wasn't allowed to leave the state for college until she developed an appreciation for Bruce Springsteen, The Boss himself. My best friend took it upon himself to convert me to fandom, and a summer of Greatest Hits later, I was hooked. That said, I'm actually noding this to contrast it to the Dan Bern/Bernstein song, "Albuquerque Lullaby", which contains the line "no one cares about your glory days" and so pretty much begs the comparison.

In this song, Springsteen seems to be of the opinion that everyone has a finite number of all-too-brief glory days, and is inevitably reduced to a hollow shell of their former selves once these have passed. He worries that the best times of his life are already passing him by, and admits that he'll probably spend his old age reminiscing about the good old days. Bernstein dismisses this defeatist attitude with the aforementioned line, and goes on to offer his listeners encouragement, as if to say every day can be a glory day, as long as you "don't let your heart/ get broken by this world". I guess it's pretty obvious which attitude I prefer, but this is still classic Bruce. Enjoy:

Lyrics

I had a friend who was a big baseball player back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar I was walking in and he was walking out
We went back inside sat down, had a few drinks but all he kept talking about was

CHORUS
Glory days well they'll pass you by
Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye
Glory days, glory days

There's a girl that lives up the block back in school she could turn all the boys' heads
Sometimes on a Friday I'll stop by and have a few drinks after she put her kids to bed
Her and her husband Bobby well they split up
I guess it's two years gone by now
We just sit around talking about the old times, she says when she feels like crying she starts laughing thinking about

CHORUS

Think I'm going down to the well tonight and I'm going to drink till I get my fill
And I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it but I probably will
Yeah just sitting back trying to recapture a little of the glory of but time slips away and leaves you with nothing mister but boring stories of glory days

CHORUS

Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Springsteen: Greatest Hits

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