"Jersey Girl" is a song composed and originally sung by Tom Waits on his 1980 album “Heartattack and Vine”.  Bruce Springsteen’s version has become more popular, and many assume Springsteen wrote it because he is a Jersey boy.

Waits originally wrote this song about his new wife, Kathleen Brennan, who grew up on Morristown, NJ.  He was getting over a turbulent relationship with Rickie Lee Jones when Brennan came into his life and "saved him."

Although Jones and Waits relationship ended, Francis Ford Coppola asked them both to work on the music for his film “One From The Heart”.  Jones declined, but Waits took the job, which is where he met Brennan, who was on the project as a script supervisor.  They got married only months later.

Springsteen sang it for the first time in June 1981, at a wedding reception for E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg and his wife Rebecca (who grew up in Tinton Falls, NJ).

Springsteen released it as the B-side of "Cover Me" in 1984.  Two years later, he used the version, taken from a show at The Meadowlands, on his boxed set Live 1975-1985 as the B-Side. This is one of the few cover songs Springsteen released.  Usually, it was other artists performing his songs.

Springsteen made some changes from Waits’ original.  Instead of “whores on 8th Avenue,” in the first verse, he sings about “the girls out on the avenue.”  He also adds a verse of his own, adapted from his song “Party Lights,” an outtake from the sessions from his “The River“ album.

Various Sources