Hungry Heart

" Hungry Heart" is a song written and performed by  Bruce Springsteen on his fifth album,  The River. It was released as the album's first  single in 1980 and became Springsteen's first big hit of his own on the  Billboard Hot 100 chart.

==History == The title is drawn from a line in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's famous poem "Ulysses": "For always roaming with a hungry heart".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 "Blinded By The Light," "Because the Night," and "Fire" had been given away and become hits for others, and Landau preferred the trend not continue.

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 dramedy "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" as well as in 2013 in "Warm Bodies".

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 Hitsalbum; 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,[2]  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.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Acclaimed_Music_3-0" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[3]  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.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Acclaimed_Music_3-1" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[3] <sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-4" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[4]  It was also listed as #625 on Marsh's list of the 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-5" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[5] ==Track listing<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;direction:ltr;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-left:-0.25em;margin-right:0.25em;color:rgb(85,85,85);"> == <p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">"Held Up Without a Gun" is a track from The River sessions that began a Springsteen tradition of using songs that did not appear on his albums as B-sides. A River Tour performance of it is included on The Essential Bruce Springsteencompilation album's optional disc. This was the only live performance of the song in a regular Springsteen concert (apart from rehearsals) until the song reappeared twice during the Magic tour and once during the Wrecking Ball Tour. The studio version has never been released on an album, and to this day also remains unavailable on the CD format.
 * 1) Hungry Heart — 3:19
 * 2) Held Up Without a Gun — 1:15

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">The cover of the single sleeve shows The Empress Hotel, one of Asbury Park's fading landmarks of the time. ==Live performance history<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;direction:ltr;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-left:-0.25em;margin-right:0.25em;color:rgb(85,85,85);"> ==

At the beginning of The River Tour, Springsteen and the  E Street Band  played the song as an instrumental for the first verse and chorus. During the November 20, 1980, show in  Chicago 's Rosemont Horizon, right after the single hit the Top 10, the audience spontaneously sang the lyrics back to the band during this intro. A tradition was thus born of Springsteen always letting the audience sing the first verse and chorus. Springsteen crowd surfing as he and the E Street Band perform "Hungry Heart" during the final shows at Giants Stadium in October 2009<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">Such a performance from December 28, 1980 at Nassau Coliseum (with Volman and Kaylan guesting) is included on the Live/1975-85 box set, but the ritual became even stronger during the 1984-1985 Born in the U.S.A. Tour, when "Hungry Heart" was a featured selection early in the second set. Even in Japan, where not many fans knew the words, this was still one of the best-received songs of his performances.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">"Hungry Heart" was a regular in Springsteen band concerts through the early 1990s, but beginning with the 1999-2000 E Street Band Reunion Tour, it has only been irregularly performed, exemplifying a later-era Springsteen practice of avoiding his most popular radio hits. When it is played, it is often with guest artists singing along, since it is one of Springsteen's easiest songs to perform.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">"Hungry Heart" regained its prominent placement in setlists during the 2009 Working On A Dream Tour and 2012-2013 Wrecking Ball Tour, where Springsteen would crowd surf during the middle of the song. ==Performances by others<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;direction:ltr;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-left:-0.25em;margin-right:0.25em;color:rgb(85,85,85);"> == <p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;">The song has also been recorded by Jesse Malin, Minnie Driver, Mike Love, Aidan Moffat, Paul Young, Smokie and Lucy Wainwright Roche, and Joe Hardy.