1984 · Behind the Songs
Written for the queen of disco, finished for his biggest album.
In 1982, Springsteen’s manager and producer Jon Landau floated an unlikely idea: Springsteen should write a song for Donna Summer. The Boss obliged, and quickly — he came back with not one but two songs. Summer recorded one of them, “Protection,” for her 1982 self-titled album, with Springsteen singing backing vocals. The other, “Cover Me,” he kept for himself.
It was a good decision. Cut during the Born in the U.S.A. sessions at the Power Station in New York, “Cover Me” became the album’s leanest rocker: Max Weinberg’s drums crack like a starting pistol, the guitars stay out of the way, and Springsteen sings a lyric about seeking shelter — from a storm, from the night, from everything outside the door. It is a love song phrased as a weather report.
Released as a single in July 1984, it reached number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 — a genuine hit that rarely gets discussed among the album’s giants. Perhaps that is because the title track, “Dancing in the Dark,” and “Glory Days” cast such long shadows. But “Cover Me” is the sound of the E Street Band at its most economical, and its backstory is one of pop’s better what-ifs.
Would it have been a disco record in Summer’s hands? We will never know. What we have instead is a Springsteen single with a secret origin — a song written for someone else that turned out to be exactly his.