Originally written for the 1980 film Cruising, "Endless Night" features lyrics about aging in rock 'n' roll.

"Endless Night" was one of two songs originally written by Parker for Squeezing Out Sparks producer Jack Nitzsche to use in the soundtrack for the 1980 movie Cruising, alongside "Devil's Sidewalk".

Geoffrey Himes of The Washington Post noted that the song "sums up the dilemma of aging rock-'n'-roll radicals" and grapples "with the problem of how to preserve the passion of rock 'n' roll youth in the face of eroding age and corroding society" in lyrics such as "I had the energy but outgrew it/ The identity but saw through it/ I had the walk but got trampled/ Had the taste; it was sampled/ lf only I could find the switch/ That turns on the endless night.

He's a major fan of some of my early stuff and Jimmy [Iovine] just said, 'We should get him for backing vocals,' and I said, 'Fine, yeah, great' and that was it, pretty simple, really.

[8] Parker later spoke positively of Springsteen's music, explaining in a 2019 interview, "When I first heard Born to Run I had just got a record deal and I thought those ads might have a point about finding the future of rock.

"[5] Himes praised how "lyrics burst out of Parker's throat like the punches of a street fighter" on the track and lauded the performance of the Rumour, writing that the band "propels the song with a kick worthy of the Rolling Stones".