Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Track #2 from Bruce Springsteen’s 1995 album The Ghost of Tom Joad.
One of the darkest cuts in the Boss' oeuvre, ‘Straight Time’ is told from the perspective of a natural born killer to whom the quiet life of a family man feels like a prison sentence. Everywhere he turns, he can feel the temptation...
[Verse 1]
Got out of prison back in '86
And I found a wife
Walked the clean and narrow
Just trying to stay out and stay alive
[Verse 2]
Got a job at the rendering plant
It ain't going to make me rich
In the darkness before dinner comes
Sometimes I can feel the itch
[Chorus]
I got a cold mind
To go tripping 'cross that thin line
I'm sick of doing straight time
[Verse 3]
My uncle's at the evening table
Makes his living running hot cars
Slips me a hundred-dollar bill
Says, "Charlie, you best remember who your friends are"
[Chorus]
I got a cold mind
To go tripping 'cross that thin line
I ain't making straight time
[Bridge]
Eight years in
It feels like you're gonna die
But you get used to anything
Sooner or later, it just becomes your life
[Verse 4]
Kitchen floor in the evening
Tossing my little babies high
Mary's smiling, but she's watching me
Out of the corner of her eye
[Verse 5]
Seems you can't get
Any more than half-free
Step out onto the front porch
And suck the cold air deep inside of me
[Chorus]
I got a cold mind
To go tripping 'cross that thin line
I'm sick of doing straight time
[Verse 6]
In the basement
Hunting gun and a hacksaw
Sip a beer and thirteen
Inches of barrel drop to the floor
[Verse 7]
Come home in the evening
Can't get the smell from my hands
Lay my head down on the pillow
And go drifting off into foreign lands
Straight Time was written by Bruce Springsteen.
Straight Time was produced by Chuck Plotkin & Bruce Springsteen.
Bruce Springsteen released Straight Time on Tue Nov 21 1995.