Out of Time

In which the Rolling Stones simultaneously write the great (or at least a great) lost girl group song from the 60s and one of the greatest Darkness on the Edge of Town outtakes Bruce Springsteen never wrote or recorded.

Am I wrong? Of course I'm not. That would have fit beautifully on The Promise. The chorus obviously—the repeated word (in this case "baby") are practically as much a Springsteen hallmark as cars and girls—and, of course, it's a basic I-V-IV construction, with an added vi in the chorus, the exact kind of structure Springsteen consciously stripped down to on Darkness and to which he's largely stuck ever since.

And of course it's catchy as all hell and unusually poppy, both for the 1966 Stones and 1978 Springsteen, so of course he would have left in the vault. After all, if he'd written something like this at the time and actually released it, he might have had a hit single, and that just wouldn't do.