Bruce Springsteen has teased his new cover of the Commodores' 1985 classic “Nightshift.” The track, which will officially drop on Friday (October 14th), will be included on his upcoming covers collection, Only The Strong Survives, which will be released on November 11th.
“Nightshift,” which pays tribute to such soul legends as Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson, was the band's first hit after frontman and primary songwriter Lionel Richie left the band. The tune, which was co-written by drummer Walter Orange, was sung by him and Richie's replacement J.D. Nicholas.
“Nightshift” peaked at Number Three on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at Number Two on the Adult Contemporary chart, and hit Number One on the magazine's Hot Black Singles list.
Bruce Springsteen admitted that his long hours honing his skills on stage — both before he was famous and beyond — along with his love for classic '60s singles have enabled him to deliver, what he calls “showtime” to people all across the globe: “It was romantic, because I grew up on the great romanticism of the Drifters and the (Phil) Spector records, and Ben E. King and that whole generation of beautiful romance that was in those songs. And then we were brought up. . . because we played in bars night after night — y'know, you had to have something that caught people immediately, and all of those devices, the use of dynamics, the use of long songs that built, and built, and built really came out of a lot of those soul reviews. And, y'know, we remain, sort of, y'know, a highfalutin bar band.”
