Songfacts®:

• This is about a man who loses his job at an auto plant, gets drunk, kills a store clerk, and is sentenced to 99 years in jail, earning him the nickname "Johnny 99."
• At a New Jersey campaign stop in 1984, Ronald Reagan mentioned Springsteen's music as a symbol of American pride. Springsteen responded that Reagan was not actually listening to songs like this one about a laid-off worker who turns to murder.
• Springsteen recorded this as a 4-track demo in his home. He put his vocals and guitar on the first two tracks, and used the remaining two for overdubs.
• Like "Dancing In The Dark," contains stark lyrics which are masked by a happy beat.
• The judge who sentences Johnny 99 is named "John Brown," which is also the name of the sheriff in Bob Marley's "I Shot The Sheriff." Bob Dylan also has a song called "John Brown," about a man who goes to war and comes back wounded.
• Since Springsteen did not tour to support the album Nebraska. The first time he played this in concert was on the Born In The U.S.A. tour 2 years later.
• In 2000, Los Lobos performed this on Badlands, a tribute album of songs from the album Nebraska.
• Johnny Cash used the title as the name for an album he recorded in 1983. Cash covered it on the album as well as another song from Nebraska, "Highway Patrolman."
• The Mahwah referred to in the lyrics is a New Jersey badluck auto town - the last Ford left the factory there in 1982. Mahwah is also the hometown of neo-R&B songstress Foxy Brown.