Hungry Heart - History

History

When Springsteen met Joey Ramone in Asbury Park, New Jersey, Ramone asked him to write a song for The Ramones. Springsteen composed "Hungry Heart" that night, but decided to keep it for himself on the advice of his producer and manager, Jon Landau. Previously, upbeat and catchy Springsteen songs such as "Because the Night" and "Fire" had been given away and become hits for others, and Landau preferred the trend not continue.

The title is drawn from a line in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's famous poem "Ulysses": "For always roaming with a hungry heart".

Springsteen's voice was slightly sped up on the recording, producing a higher-pitched vocal. (Dire Straits had done the same thing on 1978's "In The Gallery".) Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan of The Turtles sang backup. The mix of songwriting and production techniques was successful, and "Hungry Heart" reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in late 1980 and was his biggest hit until Dancing in the Dark hit #2 in 1984. In the subsequent Rolling Stone Readers' Poll, "Hungry Heart" was voted Best Single for the year.

"Hungry Heart" was used on several movie soundtracks over the years; including the obscure 1982 Israeli film "Kvish L'Lo Motzah" (a.k.a. "Dead End Street", which was actually the very first motion picture ever to feature Springsteen music), the 1983 Tom Cruise hit movie Risky Business, the 1992 AIDS drama "Peter's Friends", and the 1998 Adam Sandler comedy "The Wedding Singer". In the year 2000 the song was used in the film "The Perfect Storm".

The single was not a hit in the United Kingdom when first released, reaching only #44 on the UK Singles Chart. It did better in 1995 when it was reissued in conjunction with his Greatest Hits album; this time, it reached #28. A video clip was filmed on July 9, 1995 at the tiny "Café Eckstein" in East Berlin, featuring German rock star Wolfgang Niedecken and his "Leopardefelleband", although neither are heard on the actual audio track, as this so-called "Berlin 95" version (which was also released on CD singles) just features Bruce's live vocals and audience noise laid over the song's original 1980 E Street Band studio recording.

On the day of his murder in December 1980, John Lennon said he thought "Hungry Heart" was "a great record" and even compared it to his single (Just Like) Starting Over, which as a matter of fact was actually released as a single no more than three days after "Heart".

The "Everybody's Got A Hungry Heart" episode of Japanese anime series Battle B-Daman is named after the lyric in the song. Weezer mentions the song in their 2008 song "Heart Songs" on their album Weezer ("The Red Album")".

The aggregation of critics' lists at acclaimedmusic.net rated this song as the #38 song of 1980, as well as #341 of the 1980s and #1870 all time. The song has also been listed as the #1 single of 1980 by Dave Marsh and Kevin Stein and as one of the 7500 most important songs from 1944 through 2000 by Bruce Pollock. It was also listed as #625 on Marsh's list of the 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made.