Songfacts®:

• One of Bruce Springsteen's more personal songs, "Better Days" reflects his transition to family man, which happened in the early '90s when he started having children and married Patti Scialfa, his second wife.
  
  In the liner notes to his Greatest Hits compilation, Springsteen wrote: "With a young son and about to get married (for the last time) I was feelin' like a happy guy who has his rough days rather than vice versa."
• This is the first track on Lucky Town, which was released in 1992 the same day as another Springsteen album, Human Touch. He decided to do this after Guns N' Roses simultaneously released their albums Use Your Illusion I and II a year earlier.
  
  These were Springsteen's first albums after breaking up his E Street Band in 1989. He was surprised when they didn't do as well as his previous releases, but by this time Bruce had aged out of pop radio and MTV - he had to settle for adult alternative radio and VH1. And without E Street backing him up, he wasn't as big a live draw, and on the subsequent tour he played for the first time to arenas that weren't filled to capacity.
  
  Bruce adapted by making more television appearances and becoming more accessible to the media. He got the band back together in 1999.
• "Better Days" is one of the songs that holds up well from this era. It's the only track from Lucky Town included on his 1995 Greatest Hits album.
• Springsteen plugged in to play this song on MTV Unplugged. Yeah, only Bruce could get away with something like this, but MTV made it work, branding the special as "MTV Plugged." He started with an acoustic performance of "Red-Headed Woman," but then went electric for "Better Days" and the rest of the set. The special was released on home video and as an album in 1993.
• Ever wonder what Randy Jackson did before he was a judge on American Idol? Well, he was the bass player on this song and also appears in the video. Springsteen handled the guitar, keyboards and harmonica, and Gary Mallaber played the drums.