These are based on Bruce's performance(s) not just the song itself. You might recall I have Bruce rated as the #4 artist of the baby boom era (1948 to the present). I have previously done a best of of Frank Zappa (#1), the Beatles (#2) and Bob Dylan (#3).
Bruce's Top 50 Songs
1. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight), from The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle (1973). Can this LP be by the same artist who had released Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. the previous year? I mean, if only because Asbury Park ran 36 minutes with 9 songs (4 minutes per), while the E Street Shuffle ran 48 minutes with 7 songs (7 minutes per). Asbury Park was rock 'n roll, party music. E Street Shuffle, well, it just had a different vibe. It has these slow cookers that build slowly to an understated climax.
But, wait, "Rosalita," specifically, is not party music? Well, yes, of course, it is. It's no slow cooker. But, still, it had a different vibe. It had these multiple parts--the verse, the chorus ("Rosalita, jump a little higher/Senorita, come sit by my fire/I just wanna be your lover, baby, I ain't no liar/Rosalita, you're my stone desire"), and then that fabulous sax-based instrumental bridge. The song meanders all over the lot, the intensity raising by the minute, and then at the end: "Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey/Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey...." and the big instrumental ending. Whew! I am exhausted everytime I hear it.
And now that I think of it, the version to hear is the 10 minute concert version on Live/1975-1985. This is the Bruce Springsteen of legend at his very best.
2. My Beautiful Reward, from Lucky Town (1992). Not a widely admired song nor from a widely admired LP, but "My Beautiful Reward" not only represents Bruce's softer side, it is his greatest softer song. The narrator is "searchin' for my beautiful reward...from the mountain to the valley floor...down empty hallways...from door to door." Finally in the 3rd verse comes the cause of the searching: "Well your hair shown in the sun/I was so high, I was the lucky one/But I came crashing down like a drunk on a barroom floor...."
Finally: "Tonight I can feel the cold wind at my back/Flyin' high over grey fields, my feathers long and black/Down along the river's silent edge I soared/Searchin' for my beautiful reward...." There's none of the bitterness or bravado we associate with Bruce. This is the song of a sadder but wiser man. I'm not sayin' Bruce mellowed gracefully or that the real Bruce Springsteen isn't the guy who sang "Rosalita" in 1973. But he learned a few new tricks along the way.
3. It's Hard to Be A Saint in the City, from Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ (1973). This song is an almost perfect expression of cliches about city life. It's "gritty." "Those south side sisters sure look pretty.... It's so hard to be a saint when you're just a boy out in the street." The pace is rapid-fire, the song has more words than "Rosalita," but clocks in at less than half the time, just 3:13. Spitting out the lyrics is the only way to deliver them in the time allowed, and it suits the cocky attitude of the song. "I was the kind of the alley, mama, I could talk some trash/I was the prince of the paupers crowned downtown at the beggar's bash." Unlike "Rosalita," it's classic rock 'n roll--compact, concise.
4. Valentine's Day, from Tunnel of Love (1987). Another underrated song from an underrated LP. Not a slow cooker, it's even slower than that, more laconic, lazy.... "I'm drivin' a big lazy car/Rushin' up the highway in the night/I got one hand steady on the wheel/One hand is tremblin' over my heart/An' it's poundin,' babe, like it's gonna bust right on through/An' it ain't gonna stop 'til it's alone again with you.... So hold me close, honey, say you're forever mine/An' tell me you'll be my lonely valentine." All sung above a lazy keyboard vamp. Nice.
5. Born to Run, from Born to Run (1975). From the thumping, pulsating opening music to "Tramps like us/Baby we were born to run," one of the greatest anthems to youthful alienation, which is after all at the very heart of rock 'n roll. And it is the one song more than any other that made Bruce's career and legacy.
6. Secret Garden, single (1995) and also included on Greatest Hits (1995). From the movie Jerry Maguire, here again is Bruce's softer side. A beautiful ditty about a girl whose "got a secret garden/Where everything you want/Where everything you need/Will always stay/A million miles away." All sung over a hypnotic 3-note keyboard figure.
7. Thunder Road, from Born to Run. Sometimes I think this is the best song on Born to Run. On "Born to Run," it's Wendy. Here it's Mary, and Mary seems more real. "Born to Run" is more grandiose, to be sure, but "Thunder Road" is the more poignant. And while "Born to Run" presents an unrelenting wall of sound, "Thunder Road" has these quieter segments with just the piano and harmonica. A more nuanced song overall. Still I can't quite bring myself to rate it ahead of "Born to Run."
8. We Are Alive, from Wrecking Ball (2012). Another song that has found a place under the radar. But what a song it is: Bruce's most Woody Guthrie-esque song, an eloquent lament to injustice, Bruce paints a series of vivid images of its victims, those who have given everything: "A voice cried out, 'I was killed in Maryland in 1877 when the railroad workers made their stand'/'Well, I was killed in 1963 one Sunday morning in Birmingham'/'Well, I died last year crossing the southern desert/My children left behind in San Pablo/Well, they left our bodies here to rot."
Then the refrain injects the hope for justice, or for revenge, maybe, "We are alive/Though we lie alone here in the dark/Our souls will rise to carry the fire and light the spark/To stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart." And while the lyrics, at least the verses, are in the form of a lamentation, the music is fast-paced and upbeat, acoustic in style with a twangy guitar riff that recalls "Ghost Riders in the Sky" and mariachi trumpets that give the song the feel of an Irish wake. What a masterpiece and one that thus far has been overlooked even by Bruce's fans. Political commentary about events long past would seem to have fallen out of favor.
9. Santa Ana, from Tracks (1998), but the song was recorded way back in 1973 (at the E-Street Shuffle sessions) and was familiar to Springsteen fans as it was regularly performed live throughout the 1970s. "Santa Ana" and "Thundercrack" are both very mindful of "Rosalita," with fairly free forms, its multiple parts. Only "Santa Ana" does all of that in 4:37. 2 verses accompanied by just guitar and a subdued keyboard. Then the whole band jumps in, and the vocal jumps in register and intensity. Then a big instrumental bridge, like "Rosalita," and a return to the quieter format of the 1st verse. But, then, a big finish on the instrumental bridge.
And, by the way, the song is hilarious. It's about "the giants of science" searching for UFOs in the desert while regular folks live and love and fight and stuff in town, in Santa Ana. Finally, "The giants of science spend their days and nights/Not with wives, not with lovers, but searchin' for the lights/They spotted in the desert on their helicopter flights/Just to be lost in the dust and the night." Meanwhile, in town, "Come waltz with me tonight, señorita/'Cause only fools are alone on a night like this." And "if it don't work out, I'm not lame, I can walk."
10. Tenth Avenue Freezeout, from Born to Run. A regular foot-stomping classic.
11. Brilliant Disguise, from Tunnel of Love. A pop-rock tune with a quieter sound than the usual E-Street Band sound, as just 3 members of the band play on the song. It was the 1st single from the LP and reached #5.
12. 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) from The Wild, the Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle. I admit to a certain bias towards this song because I had a close friend named Sandy for many years, but she passed away about a decade ago now. While "Rosalita" is the best song on this LP, to be sure, this is a slow ballad with an atmospheric accompaniment unlike anything on Asbury Park or Born to Run. If the E-Street Shuffle has a unique voice, and it does, it is largely represented by this song.
"Sandy, the aurora is rising behind us/The pier lights, our carnival life forever/Love me tonight, for I may never see you again/Hey Sandy girl."
13. The Angel, from Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.
14. For You, from Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. A slow ballad and then a rocker, these 2 songs opened up side 2, back-to-back, on the vinyl version of Asbury Park and, hey, when this was new, vinyl was what you got. "The Angel" is, of course, a motorcycle outlaw while "For You," well, it's about a girl who tries unsuccessfully to commit suicide and like, "It's Hard to Be A Saint in the City," Bruce crams a lot of lyrics rapid-fire into a short song. Despite the serious subject, the word play is so clever as to evoke smiles and laughter.
15. Thundercrack, from Tracks. Ditto "Santa Ana," this was recorded at the same time and also was familiar to Springsteen fans of his 1970s concerts. Gotta love the bravado of the opening lyric: "Thundercrack, baby's back/This time she'll tell me how she really feels." This is also a grand meander of a song and runs at about 8-and-a-half minutes, so Bruce really allows this one to meander.
It opens with an introductory vocal: "Her brains they rattle and her bones they shake/Oh, she's the angel from the inner lake." Then into a second introductory section with guitar/organ accompaniment and "Sha na na" vocal. Then finally into the verse at about 1:20 and after several verses and choruses, an instrumental bridge around 3 minutes, followed by guitar break and then yet another instrumental bridge led by Clarence's saxophone, then Danny Federici on the organ. 2 more verses followed by another vocal vamp on "All night, all night, all night" and a sax break to the end.
16. The River, from The River (1981). OK, now this is really serious downer music from Bruce's, well, downer period (Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River.) On Born to Run, there was always hope. Here, not so much. Well, early in the song, the chorus denoted that hope for a better life: "At night we'd go down to the river/And into the river we'd dive/Oh, down to the river we'd ride."
But "I come from down in the valley where mister when you're young/They bring you up to do like your daddy done.... Then I got Mary pregnant and man that was all she wrote/And for my 19th birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat/We went down to the courthouse and the judge put it all to rest/No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle/No flowers, no wedding dress.... Now those memories come back to haunt me/They haunt me like a curse/Is a dream a lie if it don't come true/Or is it something worse."
17. Long Walk Home, from Magic (2007).
18. Your Own Worst Enemy, from Magic. Let's be honest, Bruce hasn't made a great LP since 1987. Well, The Seeger Sessions, that really worked. But otherwise, not since 1987. But he still writes and performs the occasional really terrific song. I mean, "I'm Alive" in 2012, for example. Here are a couple from an OK album, Magic, from 2007, though it's true that "Long Walk Home" 1st was played on the Seeger Sessions tour in 2006. There's a nice light-rock sound to both songs.
"Long Walk Home," in Bruce's words, is about "a guy (who) comes back to his town and recognizes nothing.... His world has changed. The things he thought he knew, the people he thought he knew, whose ideals he had something in common with, they're like strangers. The world he knew feels totally alien. I think that's what's happened in this country in the past 6 years."
"Your Own Worst Enemy" would seem to be about self-destruction. "You can't sleep at night/You can't dream your dreams/Your fingerprints on file/Left clumsily at the scene/And your own worst enemy has come to town."
19. Point Blank, from The River. More downer music from The River. This is said to be about a friend's drug addiction but the lyrics cast a wider net in portraying bitterness and disappointment. "I was gonna be your Romeo, you were gonna be my Juliet/These days you don't wait on Romeos/You wait on that welfare check.... Well, they shot you point blank/You been shot in the back/Baby, point blank/You've been fooled this time, little girl that's a fact/Right between the eyes, baby, point blank/Right between the pretty lies that they tell/Little girl, you fell."
20. Book of Dreams, from Lucky Town. A pretty little light rocker that appears to be about his marriage to Julianne Phillips. Much of Tunnel of Love was about Bruce's unhappiness in that marriage but this is a more upbeat story. "I'm standing in the back yard listenin' to the party inside/I'm drinking in the foregiveness that life provides/The scars we carry remain but the pain slips away it seems/Oh won't you baby be in my book of dreams." (Or, on the other hand, is this about Patty? I don't know.)
21. Eric Canal, from We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006). The Seeger Sessions represents an interesting interlude in Bruce's career. Here for the 1st time is a record consisting of songs he didn't write. And it's not the 1st time he's recorded without the E Street Band. In fact, his previous record, Magic, was done without the E Street Band, but the music sounded very much of a piece with Bruce's and the E Street Band's overall output. Not so, here. Sure, there are guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, though it's an upright rather than an electric bass. More to the point, this is a "big band," that is, a 13-piece band with banjo, 2 violins, 4 piece brass band. Oh, and lots of singers, at least 4 background singers and lots of unison singing.
The idea that this is folk music is of course ridiculous. The songs may have originated that way, some of them, but the instrumentation? Not folk. But somehow it's what the songs conjured up in Bruce's imagination. And, you know what? It worked.
And in fact, "Erie Canal" was not even a folk song in its origin, it was a popular song written in 1905 by Thomas Allen. Its original title was "Low Bridge (Everybody Down)." It is a sad and nostalgic song about the conversion of the Erie Canal from mule power to engine power. To me it was the strongest song among several on The Seeger Sessions.
22. Silver Palomino, from Devils & Dust (2005). Devils & Dust is described as Bruce's "third folk album" after Nebraska and Tom Joad. I never heard it that way, it sounds a lot more like the rest of Bruce's catalog than those 2 records do. But, still, it was a pretty weak effort. "Silver Palomino" is by far the most attractive song among a weak bunch.
23. Man's Job, from Human Touch (1992). Human Touch is another of Bruce's weaker efforts. I listened to it so seldom that I only became familiar with this song when it was included on Bruce Springsteen In Concert/MTV Unplugged in 1993. "Lovin' you is a man's job, baby."
24. Viva Las Vegas, from The Essential Bruce Springsteen (2003). Originally from the Elvis tribute record, The Last Temptation of Elvis (1990). By far the best version of this song ever recorded, right from the opening spoken vocal line, "C'mon, hit me, man."
25. Janey, Don't You Lose Heart, from Tracks. Originally recorded at the Born in the U.S.A. sessions, it did not make the LP but was the B-side on the 1983 single, "I'm Goin' Down."
26. When You're Alone, from Tunnel of Love.
27. Cover Me, from Born in the U.S.A. (1984).
28. Growin' Up, from Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.
29. She's the One, from Born to Run.
30. I Wanna Marry You, from The River.
31. Promised Land, from Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978).
32. Chimes of Freedom, from 1988 EP of the same name.
33. All That Heaven Will Allow, from Tunnel of Love.
34. Fire, single (1987). Originally from the Darkness sessions.
35. No Surrender, from Born in the U.S.A.
36. Pay Me My Money Down, from The Seeger Sessions.
37. Leah, from Devils & Dust.
38. Cautious Man, from Tunnel of Love.
39. Badlands, from Darkness on the Edge of Town.
40. The Streets of Philadelphia, single (1994).
41. Backstreets, from Born to Run.
42. My Oklahoma Home, from The Seeger Sessions.
43. Lucky Town, from Lucky Town.
44. Pink Cadillac, from Tracks. Originally from the Born in the U.S.A. sessions.
45. Jungleland, from Born to Run.
46. Johnny 99, from Nebraska (1982).
47. Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, single (1985).
48. Tougher Than the Rest, from Tunnel of Love.
49. Mary, Don't You Weep, from The Seeger Sessions.
50. How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live, from The Seeger Sessions.
Bruce's Top Albums
1. Born to Run (1975). It is so tempting to pick Asbury Park, which is so vastly underrated, while all the glory has gone to Born to Run. But in the end, Born to Run is just so powerful that it's just gotta be the one.
2. Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973).
3. Tunnel of Love (1987). Also very underrated, the only Bruce LP that is better than any of those 1st 3 huge records.
4. The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle (1974). When you think about it, Bruce's legacy is really pretty much summed up as these 1st 4 recordings--the big, early 3 plus Tunnel of Love. Everything else would be a nice career for anybody, but a legend like Bruce is based on the truly extraordinary, and that is what these 1st 4 recordings are.
5. We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006). And you thought Bruce was washed up.
6. Tracks (1998). I'm not usually given to honoring collections like this but there's an exception to every rule. In this case, here's an artist who was so prolific, his outtakes are better than the best things most artists have ever done. Mostly I'm talking about "Santa Ana" and "Thundercrack."
7. Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978). The best song on the album is only rated #31, but there are so many great songs behind that one....
8. The River (1981). The River actually has more great songs on it than Darkness, but Darkness just holds together as a grand statement better.
9. Lucky Town (1992).
10. Magic (2007).
11. Bruce Springsteen's Greatest Hits (1995). Had "Secret Garden" and "Streets of Philadelphia."
12. Born in the U.S.A. (1984).
13. Devils & Dust (2005).
14. Wrecking Ball (2012).
15. Nebraska (1982).
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