Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen

100 Best Albums

Essential Albums

  • Tunnel of Love
    Tunnel of Love
    Tunnel of Love

    Bruce Springsteen has said that, after 20 years writing about the man on the road, he was ready to write about “the man in the house”. The result? Tunnel of Love, his eighth studio album, and his first since the success of Born in the U.S.A. Released in 1987, Tunnel of Love found Springsteen exploring his characters’ inner lives. It was a conscious attempt by Springsteen to grow and evolve as a songwriter, and to meet the needs of his maturing fanbase. The album was also a deliberate attempt to step back into a more introspective place after the intergalactic explosion of 1984’s Born in the U.S.A. Instead of hopping on the hamster wheel of pop stardom and trying to create what he viewed as the impossible goal of repeating his previous level of success, Springsteen wanted to direct the focus towards his work as a composer and songwriter—while also turning his attention to matters of the heart. Tunnel of Love turned out to be a deeply introspective collection of songs about men, women and their relationships. To this day, fans still refer to it as “the divorce album”, as Springsteen—who’d wind up splitting from wife Julianne Phillips nearly a year after Tunnel of Love’s release—basically wrote an entire record about his marriage falling apart. But, as usual with Springsteen, the details are more complex than that. The album’s fulcrum is “Brilliant Disguise”, a poignant, lilting paean about the fragility of trust in a relationship, about the importance of vulnerability and about the delicate balance between the two. The album’s other songs delve into different views of this eternal quest for love and identity—some darker, some lighter: There’s the inner turmoil of “One Step Up”; the push and pull of commitment in “Tougher Than the Rest” or “All That Heaven Will Allow”; and the fear and emotional rollercoaster described in “Tunnel of Love” and “Spare Parts”. Tunnel of Love would be Springsteen’s final studio album of the 1980s, and it marked the start of a new phase in his career, personally and sonically: He did much of the instrumentation himself, with cameos from assorted E Street Band members on various songs. It was the first hint that the Boss and his ferocious bandmates were about to take a lengthy break—making this a “divorce album” in more ways than one.

  • Born In the U.S.A.
    Born In the U.S.A.
    Born In the U.S.A.

    Bruce Springsteen’s seventh album, Born in the U.S.A., is notable for two indelible aspects: The photograph of Springsteen’s blue-jeaned ass on the cover, and the title song, quite possibly the most misunderstood anthem in rock ’n’ roll. Written during the sessions for 1982’s Nebraska, “Born in the U.S.A.” was a deeply informed, unfailingly patriotic song about the plight of the Vietnam veteran, inspired by Ron Kovic’s 1976 memoir Born on the Fourth of July. Not long after Springsteen released Born in the U.S.A. in 1984, though, his defiant title track became an unwilling anthem, with some right-wing politicians mistaking its bone-deep frustration for cheery patriotism. Even Ronald Reagan, then running for re-election, called out Springsteen’s “message of hope” during a campaign speech. It’s not clear whether Reagan ever actually sat down and played Born in the U.S.A.—but it seemed like everyone else in the country was listening. This was Springsteen’s most unabashedly pop and populist effort yet, as evidenced by the fact that it spawned seven Top 10 singles in the United States alone. So while the album lacks the thematic cohesion of his previous records—Springsteen himself referred to Born in the U.S.A. as a “grab-bag”—it nonetheless turned him into a certified global superstar. While a handful of tunes here had their roots in Nebraska—including not just the title song, but also “Working on the Highway” and “Downbound Train”—others were written simply in an effort to finish the album, including the smash “Dancing in the Dark” (Springsteen wrote the song after his manager, Jon Landau, told Springsteen the record didn’t have a hit single). Elsewhere on the album, there was the Elvis-flavoured “Darlington County”—originally kicked around during work on 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town—as well as “Cover Me”, which Springsteen had written with Donna Summer in mind. And one of its best tracks almost didn’t make the final cut: Springsteen wasn’t entirely comfortable with “No Surrender”, which he felt falsely portrayed life as always triumphant. But bandmate Steven Van Zandt convinced him to let it stay, arguing that “No Surrender” was a song about friendship—and that one of its lyrics, “We learned more from a three-minute record, baby, than we ever had in school,” was a powerful reminder of the power of rock ’n’ roll. And despite the confusion about Born in the U.S.A.’s title track, Springsteen considers it one of his five or six best songs. It’s still the tune everyone remembers from this record—and, to this day, the one that best captures the peak of Springsteen’s mid-1980s glory days.

  • Nebraska
    Nebraska
    Nebraska

    Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska didn’t start out as a solo acoustic record. By the early 1980s, Springsteen had become frustrated with the time and money he’d been spent working up songs in recording studios. He wanted to front-load his demos by crafting them at home, which would allow him to bring more fully-formed ideas to the members of the E Street Band. The mechanics of this process worked out as planned; the problem was that when Springsteen brought early versions of the Nebraska songs to his bandmates, the results weren’t up to snuff. In fact, to quote Springsteen himself, fleshing out these tunes only “succeeded in making the whole thing worse”. So he went back to the beginning, returning to the material he’d originally recorded on a four-track machine in his home in New Jersey. Those high and lonesome songs had the sound and vibe he was looking for, and after carrying a cassette tape of demos around in his back pocket for a very long time, he went into the studio with his engineer, and figured out how to turn it into Nebraska. Released in 1982, Nebraska had more in common with the work of Johnny Cash or Hank Williams than it did with the party songs on The River, or with the rock ’n’ roll orgies of Springsteen’s live shows. But anyone who’d been following the Boss for this long knew of his growing interest in country music—and that fascination is all over Nebraska. The cast of characters on this record take bigger chances with their lives, which means that the stakes are higher and more brutal: The title track is Springsteen’s take on the Starkweather-Fugate murder spree, while the folks in “Atlantic City”, “Johnny 99” and “Highway Patrolman” are playing for the same kind of high stakes. And while Nebraska is an acoustic record, the stripped-down instrumentation allows the lyrics to land harder, and gives these songs a charge more powerful than any electric guitar solo. It’s an eerie, sometimes disturbing, always thought-provoking album.

  • The River
    The River
    The River

    Bruce Springsteen’s fifth record, The River, was released as a double album—a collection of 20 songs that represented the singer’s marked artistic growth. As a songwriter, he expanded the scope and world-view of his characters; as a producer, he worked to capture a sound that was brighter and more sonically open; and, as the leader of the E Street Band, he pushed his band members to become a cohesive unit, so that their explosive live dynamic could be better captured in the studio. By the late 1970s, Springsteen and his bandmates had just come off the legendary tour supporting 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town. Those shows captured the players functioning on all cylinders—and Springsteen wisely wanted to harness all of that power and all of that joy on record. He also wanted a wider emotional palette of material, especially after the heaviness of Darkness. Released in 1980, The River delivered on all fronts, providing feel-good numbers like “Out in the Street”, “Cadillac Ranch” and “Hungry Heart” (the latter of which finally landed Springsteen a Top 10 single). But there were also deeper ballads like “Point Blank”, “Independence Day” and the album’s title track, a semi-biographical depiction of Springsteen’s older sister’s life amidst the economic downturn of the late 1970s. In songs like “The River” and “Wreck on the Highway”, you can hear hints of Springsteen’s later work, and get a glimpse of the paths his song’s characters would follow in such albums as Nebraska, Tunnel of Love and The Ghost of Tom Joad. And while Springsteen continued to draw from country music—by now, Hank Williams had become a firm favourite—he also leaned hard on the kind of good-time rock ’n’ roll he’d grown up playing in cover bands up and down the Jersey Shore, with songs like “Ramrod” and “I’m A Rocker”. The end result: nearly 90 minutes’ worth of music featuring a truly diverse mix of stories, sounds and emotions.

  • Darkness on the Edge of Town
    Darkness on the Edge of Town
    Darkness on the Edge of Town

    Released three years after the epic Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen’s fourth album is full of the literal darkness in the album title—but it also also crackles with power and intensity. Darkness on the Edge of Town wasn’t an easy album to make: It didn’t arrive until 1978, largely because Springsteen had signed a contract preventing him from working with any producer not approved by the singer’s management. Springsteen sued his manager; his manager sued him back; and, as a result, the Boss spent a year and a half fighting to defend everything he had worked for. That defiance can be found throughout Darkness on the Edge of Town, from the lyrics to the vocals to the instrumental performances. You can hear Springsteen’s anger—as well as the sheer relief of achieving his freedom. But you can also sense Springsteen’s very real fear that everyone had forgotten about him, and his awareness that this record was going to make or break his future. The material was powerful enough—but the emotional catharsis required to bring it together took Darkness on the Edge of Town to another level. So there’s the snarling saga of father/son dynamics in “Adam Raised a Cain”; the firecracker fuse of lust in “Something in the Night” and “Candy’s Room”; the dull mundanity of the 9-to-5 job in “Factory”. Springsteen’s writing was informed by a new interest in classical country music, as well as an increasing affinity with American cinema. The dignity of adult life, and the sharp jump-cuts of B movies, informed a record featuring Springsteen’s now-familiar cast of ne’er-do-wells. These are people who’ve evolved past their days of living hard and getting into trouble. Springsteen’s characters in Darkness on the Edge of Town are trying to get by—but they’re desperate and making bad decisions along the way. They’re running out of road. You can hear their desperation in “Racing in the Street” or on the sombre title track. But this is hardly a hopeless album. Springsteen also included beacons of light in the form of “Badlands”, “The Promised Land” and “Prove It All Night”—a trinity that would expand far beyond their roles as lifelines on this record, and come to symbolise the universal quest for hope and redemption.

  • Born to Run
    Born to Run
    Born to Run

    100 Best Albums Bruce Springsteen’s third album is as close to a perfect record as he would ever make. His first two efforts had featured epic tales, populated with wild characters. But with Born to Run, released in 1975, he finally cracked the cypher on how to compress and tighten those long-form stories—making the songs easier for listeners to absorb, and for radio DJs to spin. Springsteen envisioned Born to Run as a song cycle, one that starts at daybreak and ends at dawn, with the harmonica in “Thunder Road” acting as reveille, and with “Jungleland” at the end bringing the curtain down—in more ways than one. In between, there’s plenty of drama and noir, with Springsteen’s vivid characters getting into trouble down dark alleys, where they fight for freedom (or, at least, redemption). The mid-album highlight is the title track, which Springsteen would later pinpoint as the moment he learned to successfully combine power and emotion—lyrically and musically—in a shorter form, while still delivering the same impact his longer epics did. “Born to Run” became an anthem for FM rock radio, with stations in cities like Cleveland and New York playing it at 5 pm on Fridays to commemorate the start of the weekend. Born To Run also marks the first record in which Springsteen had more impact on the album’s overall sound. He sought help in its arrangement and production from his good friend Steven Van Zandt, as well as the music writer Jon Landau (who’d later become Springsteen’s manager). Together, they fashioned a record that sounded like a grittier, more fantastical version of Phil Spector’s infamous Wall of Sound. Perhaps most importantly, though, Born to Run was the album that solidified the lineup of the E Street Band: Pianist Roy Bittan and drummer Max Weinberg had recently joined the group, giving Springsteen a backing team that not only had solid musical chops, but also an energy that matched the challenge in front of them. Born to Run manages to feel exhilarating, heartbreaking, thoughtful and tragic—the truly defining moment for Springsteen as a performer and as a songwriter.

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About Bruce Springsteen

More than mere performer, Bruce Springsteen is the embodiment of what we think of when we think of rock ’n’ roll. Born in 1949 and raised in working-class northern New Jersey, Springsteen melds the gut thrill of early rock and soul with the poetics of the singer-songwriter movement for a sound that doesn’t just describe the triumphs and sorrows of everyday Americans but spins them into myth. It’s a feat that elevated him from working musician to something like a national hero upon his arrival. Though best known for his arena-sized anthems, Springsteen actually varies his approach quite a bit, from the sweat-soaked grandeur of the E Street Band workouts on albums such as 1975’s Born to Run to the stark Dust Bowl folk of 1982’s Nebraska, embracing the nostalgic allure of rock while integrating his sound with synthesisers and Broadway-level showmanship (the latter evident not only in his marathon, tank-emptying concerts but also in 2017’s Springsteen on Broadway run). Tonally, Springsteen is just as hard to pin down, leavening his darkest, most politicised stories—“Born In the U.S.A.”, for example—with his most uplifting music, a contrast that has made him equal parts patriot and dissident, often blurring the line between the two. Or, as he himself put it in a press conference for his 2012 album, Wrecking Ball, “I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.” But while Springsteen’s celebrated examinations of contemporary social issues have won him numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Arts, the past has always weighed heavily on his imagination. Some of his most vital work of the 21st century, like 2020’s Letter to You, finds him pairing decades-old compositions with new material, managing to look backward while also boldly pressing forward.

HOMETOWN
Long Branch, NJ, United States
BORN
23 September 1949
GENRE
Rock

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