Springsteen’s “Cynthia” and those dreams that never come true

Most of us have encountered someone on a regular basis – in class, at work, on the train, on the bus, working at a store, wherever – that brightened our day somehow, prompting us to imagine what they might be like should we ever actually meet, but the pleasure is mostly in the imagining. 

“Cynthia” isn’t the only Bruce Springsteen song about a woman the speaker will never have, has never met, or even might not be aware he exists in the first place.  Though I’m not aware of anyone who has conducted an exhaustive analysis of his extensive catalog, the same trope has recurred throughout his career, either as an element in a song or the subject of an entire song.  For example, “Sherry Darling” references “girls melting on the beach, Oh they’re so fine and so out of reach, ‘Cause I’m stuck in traffic down here on 53rd Street,” and “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch),” both from 1980’s The River, describes how, “I came home from work and I switched on Channel 5, There was a pretty little girly lookin’ straight into my eyes, Well, I watched as she wiggled back and forth across the screen, She didn’t get me excited, she just made me feel mean.”  “I’m on Fire,” meanwhile, appears to be focused on the equivalent of a stalker who watches a woman obsessively from afar, while “The Queen of the Supermarket” later in his career is something of a satire of his previous work about a man whose fantasy woman is a checkout clerk who smiles at him from a distance and “blows this whole fucking place apart.”  “Cynthia,” recorded almost 25 years earlier as part of the Born in the USA sessions though it wasn’t officially released until 1998, takes the latter approach, imagining a man working at a construction site (or something similar) who watches a presumably beautiful woman walk by each morning, but by the end of the song, we understand it to be far more about him and life in general then her, perhaps elevating it to the best example of the form.

From the very first lines, the speaker neatly lays out the scene and the overall dynamic, enabling us to picture it almost perfectly in our minds:

Cynthia, when you come walkin’ by you’re an inspiring sight
Cynthia, you don’t smile or say ‘hi’ but baby that’s alright
‘Cause I don’t need to hold you or taste your kiss
I just like knowin’, Cynthia, you exist, doll, in a world like this 

While we have reason to wonder how he knows Cynthia’s name in the first place, given she never smiles or says “hi,” we can all understand the underlying impulse.  At some point in our lives, whether we are male or female, most of us have encountered someone on a regular basis – in class, at work, on the train, on the bus, working at a store, wherever – that brightened their day somehow, prompting them to imagine what they might be like should they ever actually meet.  The pleasure, however, is mostly in the imagining.  We might think we want to be formally introduced, go out on a date, or even date for an extended period, but in truth, the fantasy – the knowing this person exists the way we picture them in our minds rather than in real life – is what makes it special.  Real people, however beautiful and remarkable they may be on the surface, have real problems, but the woman or man we see on the way to work that seems completely put together, is probably not if you have to live with her or him everyday.  Instead, they’re an opportunity to step outside our own lives for a minute and at least pretend that someone we see on a regular basis has it better or easier than we do, a peek into a world that simply doesn’t exist outside our own minds.

By the second verse, the speaker himself begins revealing this is the case, noting that his infatuation, maybe “just me, baby,  And these fools stuck here punchin’ this clock” because she gives them a reason to “stop just for a while To stop, stand, baby, and salute your style.”  Reality, about both his own lot in life and Cynthia’s appeal begins to creep at this point.  The woman who was described as “inspiring” and whose mere existence makes a difference, is revealed to be perhaps somewhat less than the ideal of female beauty.  Suddenly, she’s not the “finest thing” he’ll “never have” and the hurt when she walks by, “ain’t so bad,” and perhaps, this too sounds familiar to us as the listener.  The person we encounter, whose lives we imagined, isn’t necessarily the most beautiful, the most successful, or any other superlative in the world.  While they might seem like the ideal for the few minutes we see them each day and they might serve as a starting point for our imaginings, we understand on a more practical level both that everyone has their problems and even if we were to have the current object of our desire, there’d still be something beyond our grasp, another object – either a person or thing – to fantasize about because the fantasy is itself is the ultimate point.

When it comes to Cynthia, “there ain’t a man in this whole town who’d say you ain’t fine,” and yet, once the speaker began considering her as a real person, he can’t prevent himself from returning to the real world.  Instead of merely projecting their infatuation upon her, he begins to wonder what she herself might think.  She hears “them guys talkin’, tell me baby do you mind” all of this attention?  Do you have anything to say about the way me and my buddies fantasize about you?  Do you love it or loathe it?  Unable to answer that question, the speaker returns to considering her appeal, that she makes them happy for a few moments when they feel sad, that, from their perspective she’s “something so good in a world gone bad.”  Somehow, this is true, even though “no one knows your number, no one knows where you live,” and even the speaker understands the infatuation he and his bodies have with her is “strange,” at least logically speaking.  Someone they don’t know, who they merely see on a daily basis and are likely afraid to meet given there’s no mention of anyone even attempting to approach her, “gives” them something special, something they need to help get through their day.  Interestingly, the speaker phrases this as a question to Cynthia herself, but to a large extent, it seems as though he’s really asking himself, “baby is it your style, the mystery in your smile Or just how cool you walk in a world gone wild?” but like so many things in life, he can’t provide any answer, asking her, “tell me if you will, Cynthia.”’

Up until this point, the song overall has a whimsical tone.  The main riff is largely up beat, a repetitive melody that evokes being outdoors in the summer time, when someone like myself enjoys cracking a beer and watching the world pass by and perhaps everyone else is getting ready for a big night on the town.  While the speaker is supposed to be working, clearly his mind – and the listener’s – is on other things and Springsteen’s vocals only add to that impression, as though he was performing for the crowd even in the recorded version.  For a tune about unrequited love, idolizing if not obsessing over a woman you’ve never met and by all accounts, never will, the feel doesn’t really match the subject matter, like the whole thing were joke and the speaker’s reality, dreams, aspirations, and whatever else aren’t of much importance to either him or us.  If it is a joke, however, the speaker himself appears to be on it – to a point.  As the song comes to an end, he remarks that he’s gotta be “pretty naive to believe in you” before the truth and the accompanying harder reality, finally break through, radically altering the meaning.  Earlier, he mentioned in an offhand manner that Cynthia wasn’t the finest thing he’d never have, but now he begins to lash out, declaring “I know you ain’t ever gonna be my dream come true” before retreating into the notion that he’s “got other dreams as good as you.”  Regardless, it’s hard to see how he truly believes these dreams can ever be realized when he won’t so much as talk to a woman he sees almost every day.  Are we supposed to believe he’s some kind of go-getter, take no prisoners, win at all costs individual in other aspects of his life, just not when it comes to love?

Given he described himself as simply punching a clock earlier in the song and the sense of idleness prevalent throughout the entire running time, that doesn’t seem likely and in the final lines of the song, Cynthia is transformed into a broader metaphor for a person seemingly content with their lot in life, possessed of dreams, yet incapable of doing anything to fulfill them.  Instead, he dreams, only to reject the idea of dreaming in the first place, rationalizing that he’s better off not having tried to begin with.  Rather than saying hello to Cynthia and seeing what happens – who knows, her type might just be a construction worker wasting a lot of his time musing about things he doesn’t have – he tells her to essentially get lost, insisting “this ain’t no come-on, Now walk on, Cynthia, walk on, That’s right, Yeah, go on there, baby,” or does he?  Here, the listener has a choice.  Either we believe the speaker has finally gotten up his courage to approach Cynthia directly, only to tell her he wants nothing to do with her anyway, or as has been the case throughout the entire song, he’s merely fantasizing again, imagining what he would tell her.  Since he is almost undoubtedly imagining the exchange, the song prompts a final question:  If this is all make believe, why doesn’t he seem to dream about meeting her for real?  Instead, he describes seeing her every day, admits that neither he nor his friends know a thing about her beyond their presumably frequent imaginings, only to finally admit that the one concrete thing he does fantasize telling her is that he isn’t interested in her to begin with?  Why and why do so in what is otherwise a simple, upbeat sounding song that likely would’ve bordered on trifling if not for the darkness lurking beneath the surface?

Once again, it seems the answer lies with the listener and what each of us chooses to do faced with the reality that there will likely always be things beyond our own reach.  For the speaker, a simple guy in a relatively simple song, these things are encapsulated in a woman he seeks and won’t speak to, but even he lets slip that there are finer things and other dreams.  For you, it’s probably something else, but for all of us, the hard truth is most of these dreams will not come true, whatever we do.  Faced with that, it seems we have two choices:  We can either continue to dream and in so doing, rationalize why we will not be able to fulfill those fantasies as the speaker has done, or we can simply stop dreaming and confine ourselves to the drudgery of daily existence.  Crucially, this decision isn’t confined to someone like the speaker who doesn’t seem to want to actually do anything to fulfill his dreams.  It is instead a statement of fact that no matter what we do – no matter how hard we work – some things we dream about will never be fulfilled because the world doesn’t work that way.  In another song, Springsteen – via another speaker – asked, “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse?” but “Cynthia” upends the question, asking us to imagine instead a world in which we don’t dream, where we are stuck entirely in our own reality, the drudgery of our existence, whether we are rich or poor.  The speaker might be a simple man and at times, he rebels against it, but to him at least, the answer is clear, the same as it is for me.

CYNTHIA

Hey, alright, c’mon!

Cynthia, when you come walkin’ by you’re an inspiring sight
Cynthia, you don’t smile or say ‘hi’ but baby that’s alright
‘Cause I don’t need to hold you or taste your kiss
I just like knowin’, Cynthia, you exist, doll, in a world like this

Cynthia, when you pass it seems like this whole town drops
Cynthia, or maybe it’s just me, baby
And these fools stuck here punchin’ this clock
Well, you give us a reason to stop just for a while
To stop, stand, baby, and salute your style
Yeah, Cynthia

Well, now you ain’t the finest thing I’ll never have
And when you go the hurt you leave but baby, it ain’t so bad
Alright, Cynthia

Yeah, there ain’t a man in this whole town who’d say you ain’t fine
You hear them guys talkin’, tell me baby do you mind
Well, you make us happy, honey, when we feel sad
To see something so good in a world gone bad
There’s still Cynthia, oh yeah

Cynthia, no one knows your number, no one knows where you live
Cynthia, I wonder do you understand this strange thing you give
Yeah, well baby is it your style, the mystery in your smile
Or just how cool you walk in a world gone wild?
Oh, tell me if you will, Cynthia

Well, I gotta be pretty naive to believe in you
I know you ain’t ever gonna be my dream come true
That’s alright, I got other dreams as good as you, Cynthia
Yeah, now baby, now this ain’t no come-on
Now walk on, Cynthia, walk on
That’s right
Yeah, go on there, baby

You make me holler, yeah, yeah, alright
I said, “Yeah, yeah, alright”
Well, she’s a yeah, yeah, alright
I said, “Yeah, yeah, alright”
Well, I said, “Yeah, yeah, alright”
She’s a yeah, yeah, alright
Say “yeah, yeah, alright”
Now yeah, yeah, alright