This song is based on conversations Springsteen had with his brother-in-law. After losing his construction job, he worked hard to support his wife and young child, but never complained.
The shotgun wedding in the story relates to Springsteen's sister, who got married when she was still a teenager. She knew it was about her and her husband the first time she heard it.
Always a champion of the working class, Springsteen has often spoken out against income inequality, which became a big political issue in the late '00s. Back in the '80s though, Springsteen was talking about it, and he often did so through the context of this song. At a show in Pittsburgh on September 22, 1984, he dedicated the song to union steelworkers in Pennsylvania who were fighting for better wages and working conditions. Said Springsteen: "There's something really dangerous happening to us out there. We're slowly getting split up into two different Americas. Things are gettin' taken away from people that need them and given to people that don't need them, and there's a promise getting broken. In the beginning the idea was that we all live here a little bit like a family, where the strong can help the weak ones, the rich can help the poor ones. I don't think the American dream was that everybody was going to make it or that everybody was going to make a billion dollars, but it was that everybody was going to have an opportunity and the chance to live a life with some decency and some dignity and a chance for some self-respect. So I know you gotta be feelin' the pinch down here where the rivers meet."
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