Your Favorite Springsteen Song?

Springsteen has written some truly brilliant songs, but the one that gets me every time is this:



"When I die I don't want no part of heaven, I would not do heaven's work well"

Runners up:

The River
Atlantic City
Highway 29

 

One of my favorite Springsteen moments is on the Live in NYC album: he sings and plays Youngstown as if his life depended on it; the song ends with a searing Lofgren solo, which gradually slows, with the band and audience exhausted, having wrung every last drop of energy they had...

... except that Bruce just figures “**** it,” calls out “1-2-3-4!” without even pausing, and they tear into a positively demented version of Murder Incorporated— not one of his greatest, but they incredibly find another gear and hammer it home, including one of Clemons’ dirtiest solos. And Bruce’s hoarse shriek of the title rounding into the final chorus is glorious.

I had to edit an mp3 of the two tracks together, since I couldn’t bear to hear one come up on shuffle without the other.

 

With the three of them trading off vocals, that song just finishes me every time.

I was always a big SSJ fan, and I remember his first two albums helping to tide me over during what seemed at the time the interminable wait between BTR and Darkness (3 whole years!).

 

Nah man didn't mean that at all. Just a concept worthy of consideration. You obviously have a bee in your bonnet about him so I guess you can keep hanging around threads of artists you despise looking for contradictions and dialectics and post negative stuff about them and make people across the other side of the world feel like crap -- keep spreading the hate dude. This sort of stuff honestly makes me want to kill myself. All the best.

 

"The Ghost of Tom Joad" from the album "High Hopes" and featuring Tom Morello on guitar.

Tom Morello is one of my favourite guitarists (especially with Audioslave and RATM) and "The Grapes of Wrath" is one of my all-time favourite books.

"High Hopes" is also my favourite Bruce Springsteen album though, to be fair, I'm not the world's biggest Bruce Springsteen fan.

 

I never owned any Springsteen records or CDs, but I was exposed to his music via the radio and MTV.

His song I'm On Fire always grabbed me around the heart. It reminded me of a little gal I was involved with for awhile.

 

sorry, don't buy his supposed sincerity, never have. I feel he's got all the blue collar cred of any spoiled fratboy. I do like lots of his tunes though

 

He’s clearly a very wealthy rock star who’s gotten used to and, by all accounts, come to love, the trappings of wealth. But he was never a spoiled fratboy. He grew up in a barely blue collar family / neighborhood / town with a mentally ill father who treated him like crap and a classically wonderful Italian mom trying to hold it together. His first two to three albums reflected that personal reality and, to me, are his most lived in and personal sounding albums. And my favorites for that reason.

By the time he hit huge with Born to Run, I think he realized his reality going forward was one of a rich rock star and he could either write about his down and out characters from the distance of a novelist or he was gonna have to sing about his new reality, which would be relatable to roughly nobody. So he took the literary approach - I think it was a very conscious decision. And I think he’s such a great songwriter he largely pulled it off, but he clearly hasn’t been writing about anything he can still relate to first person for a loooong time. Interestingly, to me at least, one of the post BTR albums that’s held up best for me, after not loving it initially, is Tunnel of Love, which WAS about his own experience again, about his time with and his losing his first wife. And I think it works so well specifically because of that.

I do believe Bruce is tiotally sincere about his politics (and I’m not gonna express an opinion or get into the substance one way or the other, hopefully to avoid running afoul if forum rules), but that’s something that obviously turns off a big chunk of his audience. I remember him talking about it from the stage in Tempe the night after Reagan got elected 37 years ago now, and I believed he meant it and felt it then and continues to. But over the years it’s ckearly exposed a gap between the people he was writing about and a lot of his fans. Although, hey Christie still loves him, so he didn’t lose everyone who strongly disagreed with him.

I don’t think many artists could really successfully make art about their down and out years into their primes, well after they’d become successful. And writing about being a successful artist is pretty tough to sell broadly. That’s one of the things I loved about Petty, though - he pulled it off. He wrote mostly his observations from his perch high above and he had enough perspective and enough of a sense of humor about it all to keep it really human and relatable. Who can’t relate to the sarcasm and folly of “Its Good to be King” and yet I doubt he could have written it if he didn’t have so many people trying to treat him like one... I’m gonna miss that guy for a long time.

-Ray

 

Torch, he started just like you.

 

nah. I was raised by wolves in northern wisconsin

 

I mean a guy and a guitar.

 

Funny thing. I remember a story about Reagan wanting to use "Born In the USA" as his campaign slogan, to which Bruce obviously said no. Did Reagan like, not even listen to the lyrics enough to understand the grief of the story? lol

 

I got stories. Let me answer this question first. Most any Bruce song is good. I have no favorite artist. Most of you folks that play well are considered geniuses by me. Most times I recognize genius follows a lot of work, and every once in a while a prodigal appears. I got stories. Bruce is a regular guy, I know firsthand. We aren't buddies but I have spent a little time with him. I've spent some time with a lot of super mega high faulting special ultra super duper folk. Most of the groups would cringe if you described them with the last sentence. Imagine someone sticking a microphone in your face, slamming on a bunch of lights and cameras and treated you as if you were from some distant far away place. Then they hung on every word you said, and promised to follow you to the moon. Freaky at the least.

 

This is a great song and Paul Carrack does it justice

 

Thank God for the poor, destitute, out of luck, can’t catch a break folks, because without them he would not have any revelance.
Regan/Trump prosperity is a threat to BS career.

 

Not a huge Springsteen fan, but I do have a lot of his music in my library.

I can say though one of his songs are one of my favs of all time... "One Step Up". I never get tired of hearing that song.

 

He also worked his ass off to get where he is. I remember one of the original E-Streeters talking about how around the time of the first album they all lived together in a disused storefront, sleeping on the floor, and how on their few nights off the rest of the guys would spark up a joint and watch Star Trek, but Bruce would go off and practice or work on songs.

 

Lucky Town...Great record.

 

Yup, worked his butt off and crazy determined. And not much in terms of other options. I listened to a podcast with Steve Van Zandt recently and he talked about how they had a group of guys who played all the time and one by one, each of them would peel off to take a job with a girlfriend’s Dad or to start an apprenticeship, or to take some classes in Community College leading toward a job opportunity. Until jus he and Bruce were left because neither of them had any other options or opportunities to pursue, so they were in it all or nothing. He definitely never went to college, not sure if he finished high school or not. He’s a lot of things, a rich rock star for sure, a very determined and calculating entertainer, but one thing I don’t think you could ever accuse him of being was a spoiled frat boy...

 

For all the critical praise Wrecking Ball got, I personally preferred High Hopes myself. Despite the fact that it's an assemblance of odds and ends.