Pamela Littky“Be Alright” singer Dean Lewis is a 31-year-old Australian guy, but he says one of the biggest songwriting influences is a song that came out three years before he was born, by the most American of artists: Bruce Springsteen.
Dean says he got into Springsteen’s music “very late,” after reading the rock legend’s 2016 autobiography. He says he was floored by Springsteen’s #2 hit “Dancing in the Dark,” from The Boss’ 30X-platinum 1984 album Born in the U.S.A.
“That song inspired so much songwriting for me, ’cause I realized, ‘Oh, you can sorta write whatever you want,'” Dean tells ABC Radio.
“Like that line, ‘Messages keeps getting clearer/Radio’s on and I’m moving ’round the place/I check my look in the mirror/I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face.’ I was like, ‘You can put that in a song?? That’s amazing!”
He adds, “So that kind of influenced me, that first-person thing that Springsteen did. And I know he doesn’t do that in all his songs, but that’s sort of been the way that I think of songwriting.”
Dean says he was also amazed by how easy it seemed for Springsteen to just knock out hits on demand. He cites an episode described in the book where Bruce’s record company told him he had to “write a single.”
“He wrote, like, I forget which song…’Dancing in the Dark,’ and one other one, one other massive single, in that [one] night!” Dean marvels. “And I was like, ‘How the hell do you that? That’s insane.'”
Dean also really related to Springsteen’s tales of “struggle,” “insecurity and doubt.”
He admits, “That blew me away. You think he has it all, but he’s dealt with a lot.”
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