Songfacts®:

• Running just a little over two minutes, "Ain't Got You" has a 1950s Buddy Holly sound, with lots of echo and big vocal inflections. It's a fun song that balances out some of the heavier stuff on Springsteen's Tunnel Of Love album.
• The song has a "money can't buy love" theme, a common one in the annals of rock. Springsteen sings from the perspective of a man with endless riches who doesn't have the one thing he wants: the girl.
  
  It's a lighthearted song, but is does have some personal meaning to Bruce, whose marriage to first wife Julianne Phillips was in trouble. They divorced in 1989 and he took up with Patti Scialfa, whom he married in 1991.
  
  Springsteen offered a bit of insight on the song when he introduced it at a 2005 show in Philadelphia. "When I'm approached out on the streets, I'm often asked the same question," he said. "I'm often asked, 'What is it like to be the Boss?' I have a standard bulls--t humble answer that I always give, it goes something like, 'It's no big deal, somebody's gotta do it, it's just like anything else.' Lies, lies, all lies. I don't want to lord it over anybody - I like to do that in private. But I did write about it once."
• This is the opening track on Tunnel Of Love, an album Springsteen recorded by himself in his home studio. He played all the instruments on the track.
  
  The album was his follow-up to Born In The U.S.A. and his last one before breaking up the E Street Band in 1989 (he reunited them in 1999).