Scialfa came from Deal, N.J., or, as CBS's otherwise perceptive interview put it, "Where else but the Jersey Shore?" -- as if by entering the world in 1953 mere miles from the Garden State's coastline, Scialfa had already seen the future of rock 'n' roll and was doing everything in her embryonic power to make sure she would make a suitable mother to its children.

But she didn't even lay eyes on Springsteen for her first 30 years. Scialfa started singing in bars in New Jersey in high school, and studied at the University of Miami's jazz conservatory before transferring to New York University. She spent 15-odd years in New York: waitressing, backing up acts like the Rolling Stones and David Johannsen, trying to score a record deal of her own, and singing on the streets with Soozie Tyrell, the fiddler who now performs with the E Street Band and is featured prominently on "23rd Street Lullaby." Scialfa lived in Chelsea and zipped back and forth to Asbury Park, where she would perform at the legendary Stone Pony.

It was there that she met Springsteen in 1984. On "CBS Sunday Morning," Springsteen recalled that the first time he heard her sing, he thought of Dusty Springfield and Ronnie Spector, but that she "had something of her own that was going." He asked her to become the first woman in his band, and she traveled with them on the mammoth "Born in the USA" tour, a redheaded, angular counterpoint to the low-to-the-ground weirdness of guitarist Steven Van Zandt and the larger-than-life saxophonist Clarence Clemons. Legend has it that Scialfa fell in love with Springsteen on sight, but in 1985 he married model-actress Julianne Phillips, and Scialfa returned to Chelsea. In 1987, Springsteen asked her to tour again for "Tunnel of Love," the album that chronicled his ailing marriage. In 1988, photographers snapped Springsteen and Scialfa scantily clad on a Rome rooftop; in 1989 his divorce from Phillips became final; in 1990 Scialfa and Springsteen's first son was born; a year later the two married; in 1993 Scialfa released her first album, "Rumble Doll," but didn't promote it heavily because she was pregnant with her third child.

See how those 15 years in New York seem to melt once you get to the second half of the story? Whatever thing of her own Scialfa had going back at the Stone Pony got hijacked -- happily, perhaps -- by a band, by Bruce, by babies. On "23rd Street Lullaby" she's returning to the realm of the single girl -- lonely, freaked out, proud of herself for getting by, and wholly consumed by her work and by the city in which she is carving out her identity.

In the album's title track, which moves from grating to addictive in no time, Scialfa sings from a place of comfort -- but it's a place I recognize, which means it has nothing to do with family or stability. Singing that she's "a little low on courage ... but high on faith," Scialfa is soothed by the "bass and drums and the traffic hums" of her own neighborhood. Her comforts aren't lovers, they're her music and New York -- the city that Carrie Bradshaw would tell you is the best boyfriend in the world. Scialfa's promise that she's "got a bottle of wine, a bag of tricks" and "a place for you under my fingertips" is a gentle bit of eroticism, but could be aimed at her guitar as easily as at a man. She's in love with herself and the way she's making her living.

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