Daily Lyric: SHE’S THE ONE, PART TWO

Jersey girl comes from down by the shore

You wonder what she came back here for

You thought for sure she left you behind

‘Cause she been gone for the longest time

Blonde hair, blue eyes, can she be real

You don’t know what she’s after or what she feels

She has an air of mystery about her

But there’s no way that you can live without her

I say heeeeey! (Heeeeey!)

I say heeey-eey! (Heeey-eey!)

She’s the one, she’s the one, she’s the one,

She’s the one

She’s the one, she’s the one, she’s the one,

She’s the one

You’re good to her but she treats you rough

You give her everything but it’s never enough

She got a hold on you that won’t let you go

You wanna run away but you ain’t ever gonna blow

Today she wants you, tomorrow she ain’t there

Playing with your heart, she don’t really care

She’ll bring you to your knees, she’ll make you cry

But the day you leave her is the day you die I say heeeeey! (Heeeeey!) ...

But there’s sometimes when other things get in the way

You think you got her in your hand then she slips away

She got more important things to do, now you’re just second place

She’s the one, but she’s gone, and you’ll never know

Where and when again you’ll see her face

From the last time to the next time …

©2023 The Hesh Inc.

Yes, but who is she, really?

I wrote this one sometime in late 1984 or early 1985. "She" in the song is a real person; when I heard Bruce Springsteen sing the original "She's The One" on his Born to Run album, the song conjured up images of this person, whom I had known for quite some time ... someone I had a primal passion for, but who met that passion with a mix of approach and avoidance, and I never knew which to expect. More often than not she would push me away, but during those times she let me come near, well ... you can let your imagination take care of the rest. And if "She's The One" told her story at the Jersey Shore, "She's The One, Part Two" continued the story in Israel ... picking up where she left off.

Musically, it also picks up where "Part One" leaves off, with the same Bo Diddley beat and a similar piano riff, but then, after the second chorus, it veers off into left field to the tune of a well-known, fragish-mode Hasidic melody before coming back to the bridge and outro.

This song was one of the first that I added to my various bands' setlists once I got to the Jersey Shore in the early 1990s, and it became a longstanding "warhorse" at gigs. The Hasidic melody always threw audiences for a loop, and in the New York area especially, there were those in the audience who'd cheer once they recognized it. Alas, I never recorded the song as it was written, but my musical partner Izzy Kieffer and I adapted the music to different lyrics for our "Song For Jerusalem" video, released 2017.