We finally know what Mary’s dress does.
Well before the internet was arguing whether a dress was blue or gold, people were going back and forth over whether Bruce Springsteen was singing “Mary’s dress sways” or “Mary’s dress waves” in the 1975 song “Thunder Road.”
The single is known as the opening track for Springsteen’s breakthrough hit album “Born to Run” and the lyrics have been printed both ways in material related to the song and album.
Debate started afresh recently after New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman tweeted the lyrics “A screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways” following Springsteen’s return to Broadway.
Enter the “Mary’s dress waves” folks.
The New Yorker reached out to longtime Springsteen collaborator Jon Landau, who has worked with him as both his manager and a producer, and Landau offered an answer.
According to Landau “The word is ‘sways.'”
“That’s the way he wrote it in his original notebooks, that’s the way he sang it on ‘Born to Run,’ in 1975, that’s the way he has always sung it at thousands of shows, and that’s the way he sings it right now on Broadway,” Landau said. “Any typos in official Bruce material will be corrected. And, by the way, ‘dresses’ do not know how to ‘wave.’ ”
There you have it.
