You might think that Springsteen’s first Top 5 was “Born to Run,” especially if you weren’t alive in 1975 like me. After all, it’s a Top 5 most streamed song of his. However, it took The Boss another five years after “Born to Run” – which only made #23 – to make the Top 5. He did it with “Hungry Heart,” the lead single and biggest song from The River, his fifth album and first double album. Apparently originally written for the Ramones, Springsteen recorded it himself because his manager was tired of him giving away his upbeat songs to other artists.
Nicholas Krgovich is a Canadian art pop musician based in Vancouver who has been releasing music throughout the 21st century. Inspired by a Boss show he attended in 2024, Krgovich decided to play some Springsteen covers for an upcoming show. Because he and his bandmates had never played them before, he quickly learned eight of his songs and recorded a demo so his bandmates could play along. A year later, those same people added their own performances to that demo and Krgovich released the project as a limited-edition honest-to-goodness cassette tape.
One of the songs they recorded was “Hungry Heart.” Like so much of Springsteen’s oeuvre, “Hungry Heart” has an expansive arrangement, with two different keyboards, saxophone and fairly dense backing vocals (in this case provided by Flo & Eddie). I hear what sounds to me like a glockenspiel too, though it isn’t credited. An additional trick for this song is they sped up Springsteen’s vocal, which is why his voice doesn’t sound quite right.
Krgovich drops most of this. Instead of all those instruments playing the opening hook there’s just a bass clarinet playing the saxophone part and Krgovich’s sparse electric piano, playing chords not the melody. A hi-hat joins right before he starts singing. Though the tempo isn’t that much slower, the feel is of a much slower, softer song, simply because of the sparseness or the arrangement.
On the second verse, electric guitar comes in and that is the only other instrument. Krgovich never increases the intensity of his vocal, just singing the lyrics softly and with a touch of melancholy. As with so many of Springsteen’s lyrics, these benefit from this treatment, with the sorrow and despair of Jersey working-class life on full display once the exuberance of the original performance is toned down.
Have a listen below:
