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Yesterday and today (Getty Images)

 

Bruce Springsteen turned 66 years old on Wednesday, taking it real easy with Jackson Browne at Red Bank’s Count Basie Theatre in NJ (seriously, they performed a 12 minute rendition of "Take It Easy"). A lot of things have changed since he debuted in the early 1970s as a ramble-happy street poet scamp dubbed "the new Dylan," although nothing could stop his predilection for leather jackets, as you can see above. Springsteen remains one of the most lovable, intelligent, and passionate rock elder statesmen, and he's still one of the greatest live acts of the20th century.

Just like with David Bowie and Bob Dylan, we've decided to honor the occasion by putting together a ranking of all 18 of his studio albums (plus one studio compilation, but more on that later).

This time, everything has been placed into four groupings (based on the worst-to-best Springsteen impersonators). The bottom four albums are probably only for completists and superfans, but the next five are all pretty flawed-but-fantastic, and the top 10 are essential.

As ever, this is of course ridiculous and subjective, so feel free to argue—or respectfully tell me to go fuck myself—in the comments below!

ONE! (Leap Of Faith)

19. Human Touch (1992) Every great popular musician with more than 10 records to their name has at least one out-and-out stinker in their discography. On Human Touch, The Boss replaced the E Street Band with Randy Jackson and a bunch of L.A. studio musicians. There's a damn good reason why Springsteen delayed the release of this album nearly a year: for the first time in his career, The Boss sounds like one of those watered-down Boss imitators, like John Cougar Mellencamp combined with Diet Pepsi.

As a result, it's arguably the least-Springsteen-esque album of his career, filled with ugly synths and outright embarrassing lyrics ("Man's Job"). As the man himself put it: "I tried it [writing happy songs] in the early '90s and it didn't work; the public didn't like it."

Even so, if you're looking for some high points, check out "Roll Of The Dice" and "I Wish I Were Blind." And if you want to see what living on the West Coast did to Bruce, just watch the music video for "57 Channels (And Nothing On)."

18. The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995) A lot of people like to rag on Springsteen for his lyrical obsessions, which, to be fair, can at times get much cornier than Bruce fans would care to admit (even famous lines like "Just wrap your legs round these velvet rims/And strap your hands across my engines" deservedly elicit a sigh). But focusing solely on the lyrics as they stand on the written page completely misses out on the sound Springsteen so carefully developed and orchestrated over his career. He is never his best without both working in conjunction with one another.

And that's why this record falls toward the bottom of the pile. While the lyrics are often good—lots of Flannery O'Connor-indebted short stories filled with American crime and despair— the album sounds boring. Springsteen can do muted, skeletal-acoustic music and make it haunting (see: Nebraska) or elegiac (Devils & Dust), but the sonic blandness undermines this entire album. Even when it's good, it's hard to remember anything besides the title track. And it's an important reminder that sequels (Nebraska 2: Desolation Strikes Back!) are almost never as good as the original thing.

17. Working On A Dream (2009) For better or worse, The Boss does his most iconic work when combining the glockenspiel-powered sonic engine that is the E Street Band with empathetic lyrics about troubled times, troubled highways, and troubled people just trying to get through the day. The music has to elevate the stories to cut through the occasional cliches. So whenever he leans toward matters that are purely happy with no nuance, it can come across as lightweight and inessential.

And that's just what this album is, a post-Obama election victory lap with lots of nods toward Phil Spector pop and groups like The Turtles (and one song that is just a big KISS rip-off). It's not as dire overall as the two previous albums, but it might have the single worst song of Springsteen's career, "Queen Of The Supermarket."

On the other hand, the title track is a jaunty bit of progressive tunefulness (solid whistling too), "This Life" is drenched in jaunty Beach Boys-esque harmonies, "Tomorrow Never Knows" is a jaunty acoustic song with a hushed vocal, and "My Lucky Day" is a jaunty variation on a lot of other '00s-era Springsteen rockers (you get the drift). The best tune on the album, in the end, isn't jaunty at all (despite its title): "The Last Carnival" is a minimalist elegy for deceased bandmate Danny Federici.

16. High Hopes (2014) Bruce's most last record is a total hodgepodge—unlike his other recent albums, it has no single theme or musical style to unite it. There are tunes he recorded while on tour with his band ("Just Like Fire Would"), there are forgotten tracks from the late '90s ("The Wall"), there are re-recordings ("The Ghost Of Tom Joad," "High Hopes"), there are outtakes from the '00s ("Frankie Fell In Love"), and there are covers ("Dream Baby Dream").

The messy nature of the record means there are just a bunch of peaks and valleys. Peak: two tracks feature what may be the final performances from longtime sax man Clarence Clemons ("Harry's Place," "Down In The Hole"). Valley: half of the album features the squealing, screeching, overdone guitar work of Tom Morello. Peak: this marks the first studio recording of the essential "American Skin (41 Shots)." Valley: the failed faux-gospel/spiritual "Heaven's Wall" and "This Is Your Sword." Peak: surprise standout "Hunter of Invisible Game." Valley: Morello's singing and bombastic arrangement on "The Ghost Of Tom Joad."

TWO! (Prove It All Night)

15. Lucky Town (1992) Released the same day as Human Touch, this album unfortunately gets lumped in with its turd of a brother (the front cover, with its terrible font and Bruce in sunglasses, doesn't help). It's leaps and bounds better than the four albums before it on this list. If it wasn't for the completely outdated sound of the record (competent though they may be, these studio veterans do not have anything close to the feel of the E Street Band), it might be easier to convince people this is a really solid record.

Besides "Leap Of Faith," the title track, and "Better Days," the song that has lasted the longest from this batch is the sublime "If I Should Fall Behind," which has become a reliably gorgeous live duet between Bruce and his wife, Patti Scialfa.

14. Wrecking Ball (2012) Probably Springsteen's second-most overtly political record (afterMagic), with lots of reflections on Occupy Wall Street, the economic crisis, and the power of drum loops. Overall, it's a very solid album, his closest flirtation with gospel, that isn't quiet as powerful as it wants to be, but benefits from its own consistenty.

After years of distancing himself from the bombastic rendition of "Born In The USA," he wrote an updated version for 2012 with "We Take Care Of Our Own." There's an ode to Giants Stadium ("Wrecking Ball"), a recession-era crime saga ("Easy Money"), a bit of Dropkick Murphys-style rock ("Death To My Hometown"), a gospel/hip-hop/"Streets Of Philadelphia" hybrid ("Rocky Ground"), and one all-time Springsteen classic ("Land Of Hope And Dreams").

13. Devils and Dust (2005) Springsteen's discography isn't quite as divisive as someone like Dylan, but if one were forced to say what his most underrated album is, it would definitely be this. Released between bombastic E Street capital-R Rock albums, this was the third part of an unofficial acoustic trilogy (along with Nebraska and Tom Joad). It already seems somewhat forgotten even by big Springsteen fans, with some people vaguely recalling that song about anal sex (aka "Reno," one of the album highlights).

It's unfortunate, because it's very fun hearing Bruce try on so many hats—besides the usual guitar and vocals, he plays drums, bass, percussion and more. This is an album filled with hidden gems, from "Matamoros Banks" to "Maria's Bed," from the exuberant "Long Time Comin'" to the title track. And best of all might be "All I'm Thinkin' About," in which The Boss strains to hit the high notes for one of his simplest love songs.

12. Magic (2007) If Working On A Dream is a reflection of the hope surrounding the start of the Obama administration, then Magic is the pissed-off mirror staring at eight years of George W. Bush's presidency. Indeed, this is the angriest album of Springsteen's career (give or takeDarkness), filled with some of his most explicitly political songs ("Long Walk Home," "Gypsy Biker"). There was no chance there'd be another Ronald Reagen/"Born In The U.S.A." misunderstanding here.

It's also the closest thing to that pure E Street sound during the reunion era (everything post-The Rising), with great tunes including "Livin' In The Future" (aka "10th Avenue Freeze-Out: The Reunion Years"), Byrds-tinged "You'll Be Coming Down," and the harder-edged (and utterly catchy) "Radio Nowhere." The major problem with this album holding it back from the top 10 is the same problem that pops up on all the reunion albums: everything is mastered way too loud, smudging many of the sonic details that the full E Street Band bring to the table.

On the other hand, this also includes my single favorite Springsteen song of the late part of his career, "Girls In Their Summer Clothes." Once in a while, when Springsteen indulges his Spector side, he spins gold—and at the end of the day, this song sounds a whole lot more like The Magnetic Fields on uppers than anything else.

11. Greetings From Asbury Park (1973) Let's get this straight from the get-go: The Boss's debut deserved all those Dylan comparisons. Sure, the big singles ("Blinded By The Light," "Spirit In The Night") sound more like Van Morrison or maybe early Tom Waits, but the overall mood of the album conjures up Bringing It All Back Home, if home were the dirty streets of New Jersey.

Springsteen also was self-aware from the start, spinning yarns about his characters' origins (Wild Billy! Mary! Jimmy The Saint! Hazy Davey!) as well as his own ("Growin' Up") just like young Dylan. There are lots of ramble-heavy, melody-light tunes that stick in the brain thanks to the swell of energy in his voice ("For You," "Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street?," "It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City"), but only one real epic that pointed at his future ("Lost In The Flood"). As exciting as much of the album is, it's still just an (excellent) appetizer for what would follow.

THREE! (I'm On Fire)

10. The Rising (2002) In which Bruce Springsteen returned from a decade in the wilderness (aka L.A.), reunited the E Street Band, and wrote an album about 9/11.

Well, not exactly—more than half of these tunes were written before 9/11, but the album and Springsteen's role as the songwriter America needed (and deserved) has become an enshrined part of his narrative in the years since. The album is used by high school teacherscited by NPR, and maligned by others for that reason. It's an album that (sort of) puts a nation's pain on its shoulders, grapples with big ideas, and tries to draw out some comfort and truth.

It ultimately tries too much and it doesn't always work as this Big Statement—the ideas actually get in the way of listening to the damn thing, with its spacious production—but the ambition, the hopefulness, the grief is all still as real today as it was when it was released. The music can be paint-by-E-Street-Band at times, but that isn't such a bad thing when you get humbler songs as powerful as "Empty Sky," "Into The Fire," and "You're Missing." The huge numbers can be hit-and-miss at times (is "Waitin' On A Sunny Day" joyous or vacuous?), but when they hit, you realize no one could make this music but him, especially on "My City Of Ruins."

9. We Shall Overcome (2006) If Devils & Dust is his most underrated album, then this tribute to Pete Seeger is his most neglected/overlooked album. All those post-reunion problems with the overly-loud mastering and sonic smudginess are nowhere to be found. Bruce tones down his late-period growl in favor of a vocal style that is much more joyous and loose. Best of all, you can actually make out all the instruments!

There's not an original song in sight here (except the wonderful "American Land" on bonus versions), but that freedom from authorship does wonders for Bruce. This is his equivalent of Dylan's Good As I Been To You/World Gone Wrong double-whammy, a chance for Bruce to get back in touch with the roots of his music and pull out a new shading that fans never knew he had in him.

So here we get an album of folk, bluegrass, and New Orleans-style covers of folk standards (popularized by Seeger), with jubilant highlights from "Old Dan Tucker" to "Pay Me My Money Down." For those who think Springsteen can only do hard luck tales of living and dying in NJ, this is a real eye-opener, and one of the most fun albums of his career. For my money, you can't really beat "O Mary Don't You Weep."

8. The Wild, The Innocent, And The E Street Shuffle (1973) This is where things get complicated. Everything in the top eight is Prime Bruce (aka, everything from 1973-1987), and I can envision just about any shuffling of the order.

So it is with great pain that I put this album here, despite it including five of Springsteen's finest songs (I'll let you figure out which ones those are). He took everything that was good about his debut, turned down the Dylanisms, started listening to jazz, put the volume on the E Street Band way up, and started thinking about his songs as short films. Hence, five songs on here are over five minutes, topping out with the 10-minute long beauty "New York City Serenade," one of the great NY songs. And if you see Springsteen live in 2015, you're still going to hear "Rosalita" for a damn good reason.

7. Tunnel Of Love (1987) This is the album I've come around to most—when I first heard it back in middle or high school, I thought this was his worst album, a bunch of garbage synth tunes with no melodies created by a miserable rich guy in a bolo tie (and no E Street Band! Who the hell fires the E Street Band??). And now, as I sat here making this list, I had the realization that I like this album more than Born In The USA at this point. What the hell happened?

For one, the synths sound way better to me now after a decade of hearing new young bands cop the same tones. Then there is the series of songs on side two—all about love, betrayal, selfishness, disappointment, loneliness and regret—that burn me up: "Two Faces," "Brilliant Disguise," "One Step Up," "When You're Alone," "Valentine's Day." The second half of the record is where its heart really lies, even with classics "All That Heaven Will Allow" & "Tougher Than The Rest" on side one.

I've never been married (as far as I know!), so I can only empathize so much with the lyrics here. So I'll leave it to the brilliant Steven Hyden to pinpoint the depth here: "You really shouldn’t be allowed to hear this record until you’ve been married for a few years, though at that point it might strike a little too close to home. If Ingmar Bergman had been born in Freehold and cut his artistic teeth at the Stone Pony, he would’ve made this record in place of Scenes From a Marriage."

6. Born In The U.S.A. (1984) On the one hand, this towering album has been completely overwhelmed by its own legend/reputation, including seven top ten singles, Reagan coopting (and completely misunderstanding) the title track, the iconic butt cover, the "Dancing In The Dark" music video, etc. In so many ways, this is Bruce's stupidest album—or at least, it's the Bruce album that most bluntly calls attention to all the Bruceisms that haters would say are his great weaknesses, from vaguely jingoistic lyrics ("Glory Days") to stupefyingly stupid hooks ("Glory Days").

On the other hand, this album makes me feel like it's late August, the neighborhood is empty, and I'm driving with my dad to the local pool. At this point, I don't know if that's an actual memory or just the power of this particular music in this particular order. There is something magical here that can easily be mistaken for trickery, but Springsteen cared too much about all the details for that to be so (just check out the dozens of excellent outtakes from this album on Tracks and assorted bootlegs if you don't believe me).

Like Michael Jackson or David Bowie during the same era, Bruce wanted a hit album, and he got it, for better and worse. And for every aw shucks, gotta put on my blue jeans and go to work down at the quarry moment, there are darker songs like "I'm On Fire," "Cover Me," and "My Hometown." And there's one of the all-time great Bruce lines on the anthemic "No Surrender" that rings true to this day: "We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school."

But yeah, "Glory Days" is still pretty dumb.

FOUR! (The Promised Land)

5. The Promise (2010/1976-78) Okay, here I am breaking the "only counting studio records" rule. "Hey Idiot Face, why don't you include Tracks if you're going to include this? Why not the expertly-assembled Greatest Hits package? Why don't you include some of his live albums or box sets? Why are you so ignorant, you Idiot Face?" But the thing is, unlike Tracks or any of those others, this really is an album, and hangs together like one. And as you can tell from the placement, it hangs together as one of his best.

Between 1975 and 1978, Springsteen was locked in a legal dispute with manager Mike Appel, which led to the extended gap between Born To Run and Darkness On The Edge Of Town. Not that it stopped him from recording though: Springsteen had piles upon piles of songs during this era, arguably his most creative period. Tons of those songs ended up on Darkness and The River, a lot on Tracks, but by 2010, tons of classics were still in the vault.

There are flirtations with doo-wop and pop ("Rendezvous," "Ain't Good Enough For You"), hit singles he gave to other bands ("Because The Night," "Fire"), and lost classics that would be highlights of other artists' careers ("The Promise," "Someday (We'll Be Together)"). Some parts of the albums were re-recorded or finished (only one song was completely redone, "Save My Love"), but all but the most obsessive Springsteen fan will be able to tell the new recordings from the old ones.

This was the moment when Bruce dialed-back his Spector/orchestral pop urges and really leaned in to the E Street Band as humble garage group (something tells me Little Steven loved these tunes the most)—which is even more acute when you watch the clip below. If you want more stuff like Darkness, don't sleep on this.

4. The River (1980) This is Bruce's grand double album that feels more like a quadruple album. There's so much going on here—arguably too much—that it can be overwhelming to try to sit and listen to it the whole way through. And that's okay! No one should listen to 84 straight minutes of The Boss unless they are seeing him live, with all the splits and grinning that ensues.

It has a little of everything Bruce does well: there's an album of jangly, mindlessly catchy car tunes ("Cadillac Ranch," "I'm A Rocker," "Crush On You," "Ramrod"), passionate Darkness-style rockers ("The Ties That Bind," "Out In The Street," "The Price You Pay"), divine pop ("Hungry Heart," "Sherry Darling," "I Wanna Marry You"), and a whole lot of actual darkness pointing toward Nebraska ("Independence Day," "Stolen Car," "The River," "Drive All Night"). I can guarantee that every time you listen to it, you'll find a new song to love.

3. Nebraska (1982) In which Bruce suddenly transforms into the ghost of Flannery O'Connor, living inside a hollowed-out reverb-drenched acoustic guitar, for a set of spooky 4-track demos that were better without the E Street Band (though they did try to play on them!). This is the Springsteen album non-Bruce fans say they love the most, because it sounds more like an intellectual Suicide than anything brewed up in Asbury Park. This is Springsteen's most hypnotic record by a mile.

"Atlantic City" is the best song on here, and one of Springsteen's top 10 best songs of all time, but this is a collection of tunes that sound like they are all part of the same song. Some days I prefer the nostalgic "Mansion On The Hill" (also check out the gorgeous cover by The National), some days it's the hopeful "Reason To Believe," some days it's the paranoid groove "State Trooper." Once you hear the rabid howl at the end, you'll understand why Kanye West loves this album so much (and accurately compared it to Yeezus).

2. Born To Run (1975) This is Springsteen's best known, his most beloved, and his most iconic album. It's his most important artistic statement and his silliest. When most people think of The Boss, they probably think of some combination of "Thunder Road," "Born To Run," "Jungleland" and "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out," songs that Bruce still dutifully plays live to screaming and crying fans to this day. It is his masterpiece, and it is also where all the cliches and hatred for Bruce were born.

But you can't write a line like, "The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive" and not go all the way with it. Nope, Bruce wrote an entire album that posits himself as Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, and Duke Ellington all at once. This is the album that definitively challenges the notion that the saxophone doesn't fit in with blues-derived rock 'n' roll music.

A few final notes about an album that has been written about more than enough: "Night" is painfully underrated, and has the best sax playing on the album. I've never met someone who could actually hum the melody of "Meeting Across The River." "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" is probably a very obscure Dylan reference to "Visions Of Johanna" (its original working title was "Freeze Out"); it also has become the ultimate tribute to The Big Man at live shows. I know lots of people who can't stand the way he sings the hook of "Backstreets," but I'd take it over "Born To Run" any day of the week. "Jungleland" is essentially the world's greatest Billy Joel song. And the early stripped-down live versions of "Thunder Road" still give me goosebumps (listen here).

1. Darkness On The Edge Of Town (1978) All the excess, jazzy, jammy, overly-wordy Springsteen-isms of his first three records are gone. A few years filled with ridiculous levels of fame and hype, as well as dealing with the bitter realities of his legal battles with his manager, cut all the fat off the meat.

Here you have the platonic ideal of Springsteen albums, where every song was carefully chosen, perfectly performed, and teeters between misery and hope. There's great guitar playing ("Adam Raised A Caine"), unusual arrangements ("Candy's Room"), passionate songs of defeat ("The Promised Land"), defiance ("Badlands") and romance ("Prove It All Night"). And best of all, it has "Racing In The Streets," which completely dismantles Springsteen's own mythology a mere five years into his career better than any critic or hater ever has.

This is what happens after you ditch the town full of losers and lose. When I need a dose of Springsteen in my life, this is where I turn.

 

 

 

http://gothamist.com/2015/09/2...ringsteen_albums.php

____________________________________

The SPL Rocks!

Prego che tu stia danzando con San Pietro alle porte perlacee del cielo





Pulled up to my house today
Came and took my little girl away!
Giants Stadium 8/28/03



Oats

Last edited by Oats
Original Post

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I'd bet that even among his most rabid fans, if 25 of us did a blind ranking...none would match completely. 

____________________________________

The SPL Rocks!

Prego che tu stia danzando con San Pietro alle porte perlacee del cielo





Pulled up to my house today
Came and took my little girl away!
Giants Stadium 8/28/03



Oats

This is just my list of personal favorites....the albums I enjoy listening to the most. It really isn't an objective list:

 

  1. Darkness On The Edge Of Town
  2. Born To Run
  3. Nebraska
  4. Tunnel Of Love
  5. The River
  6. Magic
  7. Born In The USA
  8. The Rising
  9. The Promise
  10. Lucky Town
  11. Greetings From Asbury Park NJ
  12. The Wild The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle
  13. Working On A Dream
  14. Human Touch
  15. We Shall Overcome
  16. The Ghost Of Tom Joad
  17. Wrecking Ball
  18. Devils and Dust
  19. High Hopes

 

For me albums 1 thru 4 are flawless. I wouldn't change a note. Albums 5 through 7 are on a clear 2nd tier. Album 8 is on a 3rd tier. The rest of the albums are kind of on their own tier.

 

I have always had issues with albums 11 and 12 from a production standpoint. I love many of the songs, but feel they are much, much better live than on record. Consequently, I rarely listen to those studio albums.

 

As a side note, album 7 would've been number one if he had chosen the right songs for the album. "Wages Of Sin," "Murder Inc.," "This Hard Land" and others are some of the greatest songs he's ever written but were left aside in favor of a lot of tunes that may have been more commercial but were vastly inferior.

 

Last edited by gunner
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