As appropriate for a Fourth of July "Four For the 4th" blogging effort, here's my look back at all of the Bruce Springsteen studio albums of the past 50 (!) years. Took me months to write this...
As I've mentioned earlier, I attended a Bruce Springsteen concert last February. As a long-time fan since the early 1980s - honestly before Born In the USA blew up - going to a show was one of those things you gotta do in life. Springsteen is legendary as a live artist, with marathon shows, crowd-sharing antics, emotional intensity that can overwhelm an arena (or even stadiums). Alas, over the years I 1) did not have the budget for it and 2) missed at the few times he toured when I could afford it due to work or calendar conflicts. This time around - facing the reality that Bruce is in his 70s and the odds of him touring will diminish - I planned feverishly to try and get tickets for his 2023 tour that just happened to start in my backyard of Tampa FL.
Goddamn Ticketmaster screwed me up when I tried to get the tickets though. I had to get bailed out by my brother Phil - also a big fan - who was able to scoop up the scalped tickets a month before the show. You do see him and my sister-in-law Karen in some of the photos I blogged gushing over the show.
Having done that, I felt I was overdue in going through the vast discography of Bruce - dating all the way back to 1972! - and so here I am, taking note of how THE BOSS rose from the mean streets of Freehold New Jersey to world domination in a career spanning more than 50 years.
Springsteen began like most rockers playing as a garage band, working his way up to gigs around the towns with fellow teenagers. Joining up with bands calling themselves the Castiles, and then later another group Steel Mill, Springsteen formed his own band and got the attention of Columbia Records around 1972. Coming in with the "Jersey Bar" sound mixed with expectations of being a folk-acoustic performer akin to Bob Dylan, Springsteen's early work impressed critics but didn't sell a lot of records. It would take the word-of-mouth regarding his live shows - overwhelming, epic nightly performances compared to religious experiences - to form his fanbase as his career improved into the late 1970s, especially as his third album "Born To Run" proved to be his home run hit.
Never as great a poet as Dylan, Springsteen's true strength proved to be storytelling, especially in the live shows where he would intermix tales of him growing up in both a turbulent era - Vietnam especially haunts him and his circle of friends - and a turbulent home with the songs that came from those experiences.
In 1984, the unexpectedly huge response to Born In The USA catapulted him to uber-celebrity status to where "The Boss" became the cornerstone of classic American rock-n-roll. While Springsteen's fame ebbed during the 1990s, he maintained a schedule of new releases (and re-issues of older material to explore his outtakes and musical pathways) to keep himself at the top of the game.
It would take forever for me to rank all these studio albums - although some are clearly my favorites and several are "What the hell were you thinking, Bruce?" - so a chronological retrospective is more in order. There is much like the Beatles an evolution to Springsteen's musical history, shifting from mood to mood and band line-up to solo works. In some respects, Springsteen chronicles the ebb and flow of American history - the angst he felt as part of the Vietnam generation, witnessing the fall of union labor and rise of economic turmoil in his New Jersey communities, the horrors of 9/11, and the insights of growing up and growing old - from the turbulent 1960s onward.
Title: Greetings from Ashbury Park NJ (1973)
Importance: As his debut album, Springsteen was expected to make his impact on the early 1970s music scene, which at the time was dominated by blues or acoustic folk acts filling the void left by the Beatles breaking up. The company wanted a full acoustic album of just Bruce on guitar, but Bruce included his band on most recordings, and there got to be a fight over it. The album ended up being a mix of both, with Springsteen writing and mixing with limited help "Spirit In the Night" and "Blinded By the Light" to appease a studio exec who felt there were no singles in the original playlist.
The critics loved it, but for myself the album is (still, years later) too raw. Where some bands jump out with a hot first album, this one sounds and feels like a rookie effort from someone who hadn't figured it out yet. Lyrics - trying hard to tell stories instead of setting mood - didn't always keep to the rhythm of the songs. Lacking the confidence, poise, or emotional maturity that would show up later. Even the later live performances of these songs are improvements to these early efforts.
It doesn't hurt to listen to "Greetings" to get an idea where Springsteen started from, but don't expect to get blown away by this. (And Manfred Mann did a better version of "Blinded By the Light")
Epic Song(s): None
Great Song(s): Growin Up, Spirit In the Night, It's Hard To Be a Saint In the City
Good Song(s): Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street, For You
Title: The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle (1973)
Importance: This is where following Bruce as he evolved from album to album helps. You can hear the improvement in melody and meshing the rhythm to the lyrics compared to "Greetings."
No longer expected to be an acoustic solo act, Springsteen was able to bring in a full band now going by the E Street moniker, especially saxophonist Clarence Clemons, organist Danny Federici, and bassist Garry Tallent (all major members of the band for much of its history). Along with drummer Vini Lopez and pianist David Sancious, they filled out the blues (with a bit of funk rolled in) band lineup that would make the Jersey Bar sound work for Springsteen's style. With this sound Springsteen's confidence grew, especially as he took this on tour where the E Street performances wowed audiences coast to coast. The song "Rosalita" while not a big single release became Springsteen's signature song on stage.
If I encourage anyone to listen to Springsteen, I would tell them to start with THIS album first.
Epic Song(s): Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
Great Song(s): The E Street Shuffle, 4th of July Ashbury Park (Sandy), Kitty's Back, Incident on 57th Street
Good Song(s): none (New York City Serenade is too freaking long, and Wild Billy's Circus Story too weird)
Title: Born to Run (1975)
Importance: By this point, due to low sales of the first two albums, Bruce was facing a make-or-break. The critics loved him, the live crowds adored him, but the record-buying markets did not. Willing to shift to a new sound, aiming for the Phil Spector "Wall of Sound" style to make his music more radio-friendly, Springsteen worked on lyrics more profound and on music more operatic (even as he cut back on the playtime of most songs to fit within the 5-minute clock that radio stations prefer songs fit into). He brought in new help - music critic Jon Landau who became a fan of Bruce during his big tour ("I have seen the future...") - and filled out the E Street Band with old friends (Steven Van Zandt especially) he could trust.
The end result was a more packed, coherent album that played like a self-contained rock opera (although the songs themselves did not relate to each other). Although he attempted to downplay the New Jersey narratives that reflected his first two albums, this one still spoke - especially "Born to Run" and "Jungleland" - to the experiences of growing up in (and growing out of) the Garden State.
Born To Run turned out to be not just Bruce's breakout hit, it proved to be one of the greatest albums of all time. His romantic lyrics finally reached a confidence that matched the best poetry out there (without having to delve into the symbolism that Dylan would). I had "Thunder Road" taught to me in a college class by a professor who was wowed by Bruce's word choice and narrative skill. Most of the songs are radio staples to this day, and several - including the band's autobiographical song "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" - are concert favorites well into 2023 (I can vouch for that).
If there's anything jarring in my mind it's "Meeting Across the River," a spoken-word tale in the style of 1940s crooners (think Frank Sinatra) that works better as a short story than a lyric. But it still foreshadows a lot of the darkness and desperation that would appear in Springsteen's later works (hint Nebraska hint).
There are no serious misses on this album. This is why I compared it earlier to epic albums like Joshua Tree, Nevermind, and Revolver (or Rubber Soul, or Abbey Road, or...)
Epic Song(s): Thunder Road, Tenth Avenue Freeze Out, Born to Run, She's the One, Jungleland
Great Song(s): Night, Backstreets
Good Song(s): Meeting Across the River
Title: Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)
Importance: After the epic high of Born To Run came this mood twister of an album. Reflecting Springsteen's sour mood after a prolonged legal battle with his previous album producer, and reflecting the national mood as the 1970s saw economic decline across the blue-collar places that Springsteen felt connections to, Bruce and his bandmates crafted enough songs during this period to fill at least four albums' worth of music (which would show up later in re-release albums dedicated to the outtakes like The Promise).
Eschewing the "Wall of Sound" production style, this album goes with a more punk mentality even as the orchestral band sound powers through. The lyrics take on darker themes (hence the album title and main song anchoring the whole thing) to where Bruce is questioning just what America really means.
For myself, I put this album ahead of Born To Run in terms of artistic and lyrical quality. When I had a poetry collection assignment for a creative writing class in high school, this was the album I listened to and inspired me to write each poem for that assignment (I got a good grade, might have been an A). My mom saved the typed pages, I hope I've still got them in storage somewhere...
Epic Song(s): Badlands, Candy's Room, The Promised Land, Prove It All Night, Darkness on the Edge of Town
Great Song(s): Something In the Night, Streets of Fire
Good Song(s): Racing In the Streets
Title: The River (1980)
Importance: Every artist seems to want a double-album release somewhere in their career, so Bruce decided at this point to drop this massive opus on America just as the national mood shifted from the miasma of 1970s to the (false) sunlight of a Reagan dystopia. Either that or Bruce's experience of weeding down from his previous album Darkness (some of those outtakes survived onto this album) convinced him he might as well release most of what he and the E Street Band did just to get it out there (there WAS an early version of this called The Ties That Bind as a single album, but Bruce rejected that and recorded even more songs to make The River).
Where Bruce claimed Born To Run was an album based on the American experience, this album truly was: Running on themes of families drifting away, hopes dashed, relationships failing, and a sense that everything the Boomer generation grew up to disappearing into scrapbooks and faded memories. There were frivolous rockers like "Out In the Street," "Cadillac Ranch," and "I'm A Rocker" on here, but dominating this album were cynical, heartfelt songs like "Hungry Heart" and "Point Blank" and other, slower tunes that echoed the melancholy of Darkness.
Like most double-albums, fans can argue about what songs shouldn't have been included to reduce the album to a more manageable single release. For myself, the final quarter of this - on vinyl, it'd have been Side Four, on CD it's the second half of Disc Two - were slow, painful listens and I haven't been a fan of those songs. However, I am a huge fan of "Point Blank" which has a similar slow and mournful style but yet carried more powerful lyrics and emotional heft as Bruce performs it. I woke up one morning to "Point Blank" playing on the radio, and I lay in bed listening to it and I swear it played for like 12 minutes and I felt every second of it.
Bit of trivia: Bruce wrote the song "Hungry Heart" for the punk band Ramones, but Landau talked him into keeping it for himself. It turned into Springsteen's first Top Ten hit song. What would the music world be like if the Ramones had gotten that song and it took them to the Top Ten?
Epic Song(s): Hungry Heart, Out In the Street, Point Blank
Great Song(s): The Ties That Bind, Two Hearts, You Can Look (But Better Not Touch), Cadillac Ranch, I'm a Rocker
Good Song(s): Sherry Darling, The River, Fade Away
Title: Nebraska (1982)
Importance: All of the darkness and cynicism creeping into Springsteen's early work reaches an epic apex with this album, arguably a solo work with sparse inclusions of other E Street band members. "Sparse" is a good word for this album, as it tears down the American Dream and shakes loose a lot of the nightmares haunting the nation as crime and despair followed the collapse of blue-collar communities Bruce called home.
The recording history for this album took on legendary status: Springsteen recorded a bunch of new songs onto a single recorder, planning to have the E Street re-do them into more rounded rock-n-roll numbers similar to Darkness and River. Thing was, when they did record the "electric" version of most of those songs, Bruce realized the original solo takes were the better versions and decided to release a cleaned-up set of songs from that. Several of the songs recorded from this period would end up as full E Street songs on Born In the USA, meaning there are at least nine known unreleased songs as well as the full-band versions of several of these songs in the vault that fans would love to hear some day.
I should note Bruce and the E Streeters perform a hard-rock version of "Johnny 99" which they did at the 2023 Tampa show, but compared to the original sparse version, I gotta go with the sparse. An up-tempo song about a guy wanting to be on death row just isn't a toe-tapper. Otherwise, drummer Max Weinberg is on record claiming the "Electric Nebraska" kills it (yes, pun intended).
"Killing It" is the most common theme across this album, as most songs deal with a major character committing murder and the emotional fallout haunting them to each song's end. Even "Atlantic City" opens with one of the most iconic lines in music "Well they blew up the Chicken Man In Philly last night/And they blew up his house too..." which gives mafioso Phil Testa one of the most memetic deaths outside of Goodfellas.
In terms of repeat listens, this is a hard album to start and finish. Ever see the film Requiem For a Dream? This is similar: You can listen to it once and appreciate the artistic talent that went into it, but it's not exactly something you play at pool parties and family reunions. The only up-tempo song on here is "Open All Night" and it's a personal favorite of mine (this one song also helped with that poetry assignment I mentioned earlier) but past that it's all moody stuff similar to "Point Blank". Some of these songs - especially "Atlantic City," "Johnny 99," and "Highway Patrolman" - are vital parts of the Springsteen oeuvre, so this is still a must-hear album.
Epic Song(s): Atlantic City, Johnny 99, Highway Patrolman, Open All Night
Great Song(s): State Trooper, Reason To Believe
Good Song(s): Mansion On the Hill
Title: Born In the USA (1984)
Importance: Where Born to Run was a major seller and arguably a magnum opus, Born In the USA was a major blockbuster... and arguably Springsteen's most misunderstood and overhyped album ever.
Coming at a time when the music industry got into popular music - with a set rhythm and polished production (oft-times overproduced) that balanced between funk/dance and arena rock-n-roll - as well as rushing into videos as marketing with the stateside explosion of MTV, BitU became the focus of a mass media campaign playing up to the themes of Americana that Springsteen had been working with the past few albums. Intentionally recorded as a rocking album to counter the starkness of Nebraska, the power of the E Street Band's musical style attracted audiences attuned to the beats and the swagger, which ironically distracted from the rather negative dark lyrics Springsteen used to highlight his ongoing concerns about the decline of the blue-collar middle class. As a result, the album gained a notoriety for appealing to more conservative audiences who failed to pay attention to the lyrics that were railing against them.
The perfect example is the title song itself "Born in the USA," written from the viewpoint of a struggling Vietnam vet unable to find work, unable to cope with the friends he lost in the war, and doomed to live in the "shadow of the penitentiary" implying he was now a career criminal. Problem is, Bruce's passionate screaming of the chorus part "I WAS... BOORRRRRNNNN IN THE USAAAA!" made listeners think it was a song about rah-rah Patriotism. President Reagan himself tried to incorporate the song for his 1984 re-election campaigns. Springsteen came to openly regret he ever made the song into a rock-n-roll hit.
 |
A lot of Boss fans believe this image
is symbolic of Bruce taking a piss - look at how he's standing -
on the American flag, a direct rebuke of the
rah-rah patriotism that Bruce saw during Vietnam
and the Reagan years. |
Controversy aside, this album is one of Bruce's major works, an effective mix of moody ballads, odes to nostalgia, and straight up rockers. If you ignore the hype and actually listen to the lyrics, that is.
Epic Song(s): Born In the USA, Downbound Train, No Surrender, Glory Days
Great Song(s): Darlington County, I'm On Fire, Bobby Jean, My Hometown
Good Song(s): I'm Going Down, Dancing In the Dark
Title: Tunnel of Love (1987)
Importance: Coming off of the media high of the Born In the USA period, and also coping with the complexity of his own personal life going through the wringer, this album defied the expectations the media had of Bruce sticking to the manufactured flag-waving that had made him an 80s superstar.
Having wed an actress/model Julianne Phillips in 1985 - almost under societal pressure to do so - that marriage quickly soured, which reflected on this album's entire theme of the highs and lows of relationships.
Technically not an E Street album, as the band members only appeared in several songs throughout, but also not a straight solo album like Nebraska, this work seems to take a middle approach. Even with the backing band helping the music be more radio-friendly, this becomes arguably Springsteen's most personal album speaking from his own soul about the turmoil he needed to resolve.
In my opinion, this may be Springsteen's greatest work. The lyrics are at the level of sheer poetry, the music matching the mood on nearly every song, and the entire album fitting its themes about love and loss in ways few other albums by other artists ever achieved (Fleetwood Mac's Rumours arguably the only work to exceed this one). "Brilliant Disguise," an incredible gut-wrencher of a song about the pain of falling out with someone you thought you knew, is in my humble opinion the greatest song Bruce ever wrote.
Epic Song(s): Tougher Than The Rest, Spare Parts, Tunnel of Love, Brilliant Disguise
Great Song(s): Ain't Got You, All That Heaven Will Allow, Two Faces, One Step Up, Valentine's Day
Good Song(s): Cautious Man, When You're Alone
Title: Human Touch (1992)
Importance: With the 1980s in the rearview mirror, Springsteen made the decision to reinvent himself as a different kind of rocker. He made the announcement that he would perform with a brand-new backing band (he didn't exactly say outright that the E Street Band was finished, but yeah) and set to work on two albums to be released simultaneously (there was a brief fad by artists like Guns n Roses to release two separate single LPs instead of releasing a double album, as though giving fans a choice to buy one or the other).
The resultant releases - at least here with Human Touch, not as much with Lucky Town - was a more pop-oriented sound than even Born in the USA. It was as though Bruce decided "Okay, let's make an album for an arena rock tour." However...
Both these albums had the misfortune of coming out just as Nirvana and the Grunge movement reset the rock music scene in the opposite direction Bruce was heading. The pop mentality underscoring Bruce's work on this album failed to appeal to general audiences, and worse alienated die-hard Springsteen fans more attuned to a rawer, bar-band sound. Some of the songs on this album have held up over the years, such as the title track, "Roll of the Dice," and "Real World," but others like "57 Channels" - Bruce's hoped-for pop hit that preached in all the wrong ways - were painful mistakes. The other album release at least walked away with a slightly better reputation.
Epic Song(s): Human Touch, Roll of the Dice
Great Song(s): Gloria's Way, Real World
Good Song(s): Soul Driver, All Or Nothing At All
Title: Lucky Town (1992)
Importance: Released in sync with Human Touch, Lucky Town had the impression of being the more blues-oriented sound of the two. Where Human Touch focused on more pop-flavored tunes, this album appealed to the sounds Springsteen relied on in his earlier albums. Problems again were that the over-produced feel to the songs hurt some of the tunes that could have been better off with more rawness. Still, of the two, Lucky Town is more enjoyable work all these years later. Like the debates fans have about double albums over what could get pared down to a more pleasing single album, I would argue Bruce was better off taking the best songs here and the best songs on Human Touch and just releasing that as one (better) album.
Epic Song(s): Better Days, Big Muddy
Great Song(s): Lucky Town, Living Proof
Good Song(s): Local Hero, If I Should Fall Behind, My Beautiful Reward
Title: The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995)
Importance: Either reeling from the backlash of the previous albums' poor reception, or else getting into the groove of bouncing between band-backed studio albums followed by toned-down acoustic solo works, this album had Springsteen returning to his meditations on the decline of the American middle class and the cynicism of a political culture that punishes the poor.
Essentially the spiritual successor to Nebraska, but done with a more somber and slow take and with more country influence than folk, one of the problems with this album was how bleak it got compared to everything else Springsteen had done before. Not helping matters was a dip in the sound quality: Half of everything Bruce sang was whispered or muffled, making this a nearly incomprehensible work. Coming at a time when my other music faves U2 and Van Halen were releasing miscues of their own, this was an album I just couldn't get into and kind of soured me on music for the rest of the 1990s.
Re-listening to it now for this review, I can be more forgiving now than how I first received this album, but it's still more bleak than what I like to hear. Makes me wonder what an "electric" version of this album would sound like.
Epic Song(s): Ghost of Tom Joad
Great Song(s): Straight Time
Good Song(s): Youngstown, The New Timer, Galveston Bay, My Best Was Never Good Enough
Title: The Rising (2002)
Importance: The release date matters. THIS was the album Bruce released in the wake of 9/11.
Responding to the emotional trauma of the entire nation, Springsteen crafted songs and odes to those who had fallen that day and for the families they had left behind. Echoing the beliefs he's shown about American life throughout his early period - much like Darkness but without the bitterness - this was Bruce's - and the reunited E Street Band's - return to form.
Anchored by the title track "The Rising," which was less an anthem - not at all like "Born in the USA" - but more a hymnal, a religious memorial to those who died on 9/11. The closing chorus of Bruce describing the images of family and loved ones while another voice echoes "A Dream of Life" is the most haunting thing I've ever heard, and automatically triggers a crying fit even thinking about those lines. Excuse me (wipes the tears away). It's a song you need to sing (not listen, you will feel yourself driven to sing along) in cathedrals, and when performed live - trust me, I witnessed it first hand this February - it's a straight-up religious experience.
This wasn't an album written in anger. It was an attempt at coming to terms with the grief.
Epic Song(s): Lonesome Day, The Rising
Great Song(s): Waiting on a Sunny Day, Further On Up the Road
Good Song(s): Counting on a Miracle, My City In Ruins
Title: Devils & Dust (2005)
Importance: Following the pattern of an acoustic album after a band album, Springsteen culled together songs he'd been working on for a decade or more and issued this to critical acclaim. On this, he played more to the style of Dylan instead of Pete Seeger (which had been more noticeable influences on Nebraska and Tom Joad), which gives some of the songs more of a rock n roll edge than before. It's still in the purview of Darker and Edgier that makes this album hard to sit through in a good mood.
Epic Song(s): Devils & Dust, Long Time Comin
Great Song(s): All the Way Home, Maria's Bed
Good Song(s): Jesus Was an Only Son, The Hitter
Title: Magic (2007)
Importance: Getting back into the groove of reuniting with the E Street Band (AGAIN), Springsteen also got back into the habit of writing about the struggles of Middle America, this time with a bittersweet nostalgia as Bruce is clearly going through middle age. Both the quagmire of the Iraqi/Afghani wars - which had to trigger Bruce's memories of what Vietnam did to his friends - and the early onset of the Great Recession added to the underlying despair.
Among the darker elements of this album were several of Springsteen's brighter musical efforts, with "Girls In Their Summer Clothes" mirroring the romantic early works like "Rosalita", except with the melancholy of an older man wondering why those girls "passed me by." It was a song that deserved a little more radio love at the time, and it's arguably one of his later works that equals the best albums from his peak.
The way I don't see much talk about this album, I get the feeling this was a very underrated effort and people need to reconsider its place in the Springsteen pantheon.
Epic Song(s): You'll Be Coming Down, Gypsy Biker, Girls In Their Summer Clothes
Great Song(s): Radio Nowhere, Livin' in the Future, Long Walk Home
Good Song(s): Last to Die, Terry's Song
Title: Working On a Dream (2009)
Importance: What Steven Van Zandt called the last of a trilogy of albums - starting with The Rising and seconded by Magic - covering the mood Springsteen had regarding the decade scarred by 9/11, bad wars, economic malaise, and questionable Star Wars prequels. Going in hard with a big rock-n-roll sound with the E Street backing him up, Springsteen attempted to create a grand musical experience on this work, only to have a lot of miscues and questionable decisions muck things up. This was the first album post-Born to Run I didn't fully like, and a recent re-listening for this review still didn't win me over.
This was also the album that band member Dan Federici recorded on before passing in 2008. This is the point where time is catching up to the band, and the future albums were going to reflect that.
Epic Song(s): Lucky Day
Great Song(s): Working on a Dream, the Wrestler
Good Song(s): alas
Title: Wrecking Ball (2012)
Importance: Building up on the anger about the causes of the Great Recession that was still ongoing by this point, witnessing the passage of time affecting his New Jersey roots as well as coming to terms with more personal loss, this was the album Springsteen released to a new decade coping with the same old sorrows.
Not a full E Street effort but more rocking than his acoustic albums, this album shares more with Tunnel of Love in that regard, but it more closely resembles Magic in mood and effort. Anchored by the title track "Wrecking Ball" - an ode to the demolition of aging Meadowlands Stadium, where Springsteen played often on his tours - this is an album defined by defiance.
This is the album released after the death of "Big Man" Clarence Clemons himself (the album is dedicated to him). His power on the saxophone, a key element to the brass Jersey Bar sound that carries the band even after his passing, this was a loss that affected Bruce and the band in painful ways.
Epic Song(s): Wrecking Ball
Great Song(s): Shackled and Drawn, Land of Hope and Dreams, We Are Alive
Good Song(s): Easy Money, You've Got It
Title: High Hopes (2014)
Importance: As part of the ongoing efforts by Springsteen to re-record, remix, and update many of the songs he's worked on since the 1970s - his backlog of unreleased material could fill a five-story library, and I might not even be exaggerating - Bruce often came out with releases like Tracks and The Promise to cover particular eras or productions like the Darkness sessions. This album was probably the first by my estimation where he added remixes of already-released songs performed in alternative ways as though rethinking his earlier decisions and looking for better acceptance.
As such, this is one of Bruce's more experimental albums, not artistic like Nebraska but exploring the range and feel of his existing music to see if he could find something fresh out of his older works. To my ears, not a lot of the songs worked out the way he hoped, but some of the choices - like turning "Ghost of Tom Joad" into a rock-n-roll number that would fit well into Magic and Wrecking Ball playlists - turned out as effective re-imagined efforts.
Epic Song(s): Just Like Fire Would
Great Song(s): High Hopes, American Skin (41 Shots), Ghost of Tom Joad
Good Song(s): The Wall
Title: Western Stars (2019)
Importance: I tell no lie, I'm not a fan of country music. Southern rock, oft-times yes. And there are times in Springsteen's oeuvre where he crosses from Jersey Bar sound to Southern sound without missing a beat and going back again like he was merely visiting. When he goes acoustic most of his work echoes the folkways style of Seeger and Dylan, but some of those songs do carry a western flavor. This was the album where Bruce well full cowboy.
To be fair, Springsteen kept wanting to record albums that reflected the full American experience (like writing the Great American Novel) and so there had to be a lot of western-themed songs bouncing around in that head of his. Inspired by the California rock sounds of the 1970s like Glen Campbell and the Eagles - which carried a lot of country influence - Springsteen brought to it his own sense of nostalgia and bittersweet view of an America he missed from his youth.
For me, I dreaded getting this album worried it was going to be a sound I wasn't going to comprehend - much like watching U2 go disco on me with Pop - but this turned out to be a listenable effort, with decent songs that didn't sound any different from songs I've heard between Darkness through Wrecking Ball. At least Bruce got this out of his system. I think.
Epic Song(s): Sundown, Hello Sunshine
Great Song(s): Tuscon Train, Sleepy Joe's Cafe
Good Song(s): Hitch Hikin'
Title: Letter to You (2020)
Importance: Coming relatively quickly after Western Stars, as though Springsteen wanted to get back to his rock roots with the E Street Band as soon as possible, Letter to You came out just as the world shut down over a pandemic. It seems almost fitting, as a lot of the songs on this album seem affected by all the personal losses Bruce was feeling echoing the similar losses a lot of people were going through (not just the deaths of loved ones, but the reality our lives were changing in ways that can't be undone).
A lot of the lyrics on this album come across as Bruce's most personal work since Tunnel of Love, and is near-equal to that album in terms of poetic impact. Songs like "Last Man Standing" - dedicated to Bruce's friend George Theiss who co-founded his first band the Castiles - covered themes like aging, and regret of a man reaching 70 and coming to terms that he's closer to his death - "coming for me like a freight train" - than to his birth.
Musically this is one of Springsteen's most melodic efforts, and arguably the best album he's done since the 1980s, placing this atop the great albums - Born to Run, Darkness, and Tunnel of Love - on his resume.
Epic Song(s): Letter to You, Last Man Standing, House of a Thousand Guitars, Ghosts
Great Song(s): Burnin' Train, I'll See You In My Dreams
Good Song(s): Rainmaker
Title: Working On a Dream (2022)
Importance: Interesting for a musician/songwriter like Springsteen, he's got so much of his own material to record you don't expect him to do a lot of covers of songs written/performed by others (Hell, he's given half the music industry his outtakes between 1977 through 1987). So it was a shock to witness Bruce release an album of nothing but covers. This is, by his own account, an attempt to "just sing" and perform the songs he felt did justice to the "great American songbook."
Focusing on R&B and soul songs from the 1960s through the 1980s, Bruce does his best to sing in that style, and on some of these songs he acquits himself well. It's just... well, I'm sorry, not every song deserved a cover version (the originals being way better no matter what Bruce tries to do). To me, the most egregious is his take on "Nightshift," a memorial song originally sung by the Commodores dedicated to Jackie Wilson and Marvin Gaye: where the Commodores was soulful as befitting an R&B group, Springsteen's attempt just sounded... wrong, overproduced, not at the right tempo. More of a rocker than an elegy. Bruce may love that song, but... I'm sorry, it was perfect the way it was.
This album does help us as a fanbase to see what influences Bruce when it comes to his own work. And some of the performances are good. It's just... was this trip really necessary?
Epic Song(s): Don't Play That Song
Great Song(s): Do I Love You (Yes I Do), Turn Back the Hands of Time, Any Other Way
Good Song(s): Soul Days, I Wish It Would Rain
And that, kiddos, is the official studio albums he's done. Wanna go into some of the albums and packaged releases of importance to the Springsteen catalog? 'Cause there's MORE (oh Gods).
Maybe for the next tour.
