With a Chuck Berry-style guitar riff, the song tells the story of an unnamed narrator's all-night drive across industrial New Jersey to reach his girl, Wanda, whom he met when she was a waitress at the Route 60 Bob's Big Boy.

"Open All Night" was released as a single in the UK, backed by "The Big Payback",[2] but did not chart.

[2] Though never released as a single in the United States,[2] it garnered enough album oriented rock airplay to reach #22 on the U.S.

Springsteen performed this song infrequently until the Sessions Band Tour of 2006, when it was transformed into an eight-minute "show-stopping rave-up" whose already surreal lyrics[3] were made more strange by being rapped against a big band swing arrangement and a pseudo-Andrews Sisters female backing vocal trio.

Jay Farrar of Son Volt recorded a version which was released in 2005 on A Retrospective: 1995–2000.