Bruce Springsteen, left, and Jimmy Fallon on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” in January 2014.
New Jersey’s current governor, Chris Christie, is a big Springsteen fan. The left-leaning Springsteen doesn’t always return the love, though. In particular, on an episode of “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” in January 2014, when Christie’s George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal was big news, he donned a “Born in the USA”-era outfit (as did Fallon) to make fun of Christie with “Gov. Chris Christie’s Fort Lee, New Jersey Traffic Jam,” a “Born to Run” re-write.
“You got Wall Street masters stuck cheek to cheek with blue-collar truckers/And, man, I really gotta take a leak/But I can’t/I’m stuck in Gov. Christie’s Fort Lee, New Jersey, traffic jam,” he sang.
Later, when Fallon sang the line, “you’re killing the working man,” Springsteen pointedly joined in.
About a month later, Christie was asked about Springsteen during a town hall meeting, and answered, diplomatically, “I still live in hope that someday, even as he gets older and older, he’s gonna wake up and go like, ‘Yeah, he’s all right. He’s a good guy. It’s all right. We can be friends.’ ”
New Jersey celebrated its 350th birthday in 2014. And in the 350 Jersey Songs series, we marked the occasion by posting 350 songs — one a day, from September 2014 to September 2015 — that have something to do with the state, its musical history, or both. To see the entire list, click here.
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