Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

I can't get worked up and annoyed about Bruce in the way I can about some other rockers. He has an ear for a great line (the opening of "Hungry Heart" for instance) and I can forgive him a lot for that. He doesn't resonate with me and like the Replacements I think that's a cultural thing.

I also - and this is totally subjective - never get the impression Bruce ever thinks he's particularly cool. Which is not something I can say of most other 'real rock'n'roller' types, mainstream or otherwise.

File under yet to be discovered. I was listening to an apologetic defence of his work from Sean Rowley on the radio the other day, and it got me wondering again. People of my generation's first real exposure to him was the 'Born in the USA' air-punching era and that obviously wasn't likely to engender much interest. Yes, I know it was all ironic.

What I have heard of his 70's stuff sounds like I might grow to love it. That midwest blue-collar world his songs inhabit seems harder to relate to than any other, but even in 1988, I had the feeling Paddy McAloon was missing the point with the song 'Cars & Girls'.

At the moment, I'm afraid the song of his I like best is a 90s one - 'If I Should Fall Behind', which I only know from the Grant McLellan cover version.

Badly Drawn Boy is a Springsteen obsessive, which I thought was quite cute.

N.

And yes, Tom, he's got a very good ear for a line.

I heard the version of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" when I was young and that is pretty spiff, I freely agree. Circa 1984, liking El Bruce was unsurprising for me as that was a pretty damn good radio year -- Chuck Eddy specifically called it as such in _Stairway to Hell_, and he was goddamn right. Thus liking all that stuff he made was a matter of course alongside all those singles from _Purple Rain_ and _Like A Virgin_ and etc.

Time went on and I proceeded to not care. I never cared enough to buy an album anyway, and the 'classic early singles' only made sense in my classic rock phase, which lasted about nine months in senior year.

Then I ended up in LA and encountered the first of Robert Hilburn's 345,234,843 printed sermons on How Bruce Springsteen Heals the Sick, Raises the Dead and Means More to Human Existence Than the Combined Efforts of Louis Pasteur, Billie Holiday and Charles Schulz. I encountered other blowhards. The music touched me with the impact of a dying flea. A roommate was obsessed with him to the point of near mania. I cried.

The end.

Frankly, the Walkabouts any day of the goddamn week, month, year, decade, century, etc. If the relative fame levels were reversed, I would cling to this assumption with even more deep, abiding passion because then I would have The People on my side. Even alone, though, it's comfy. And Frankie Goes to Hollywood's version of "Born to Run" is my fave.

i actually liked born_in_the_u.s.a when it came out at age 7, but later, i found it to be an obstacle in getting to love bruce, and i'm sure there are a ton of artists out there whose work at that time has kept people away from them.

as sterling said, it's funny what driving a car can do, especially when it's another dark and lonely night out on an empty anonymous new jersey highway and "born to run" comes on the highway. but i've been there, so i'll move on.

you can get by on the first five or so albums on the music and production alone -- unless of course you hate phil spector and are, therefore, destined to spend eternity in hell -- and the later stuff will stick if you find something in the lyrics that rings far too true. sure, he mines the same territory in a lot of his songs, but so do belle & sebastian and so did the smiths; except the kids in bruce's songs could kick the ass of their counterparts in the aforementioned.

ned, i think you have the same problem as tom: it's a cultural thing. ;)

It's not a cultural thing; I mean for god's sake Motorcycle Emptiness might as well be Bruce Springsteen on a literacy trip in terms of subject, and I know Tom likes the song, and I believe Ned does too. Whether that particular statement was tongue in cheek or not, it's a tired excuse and reasoning, one usually used by the saddest of Bruce Springsteen fans, the ones who "identify" with his sentiments, seemingly losing track of the fact that BRUCE'S CHARACTERS NEVER ACTUALLY MAKE IT OUT. Some positive role models to rock out to.

The thing is, I think it's the voice and the earnestness, which was already said. The stylistic values of it....the basic cultural and escape sentiments, lyrically, of Motorcycle Emptiness and Born to Run might be very similar in tone, but the style and vocalisings are entirely, 100% different. Bruce has a very sarcastic bent, a very dark bent, lyrically, but his style of music softens the blow and sometimes people just don't like it.

And those people are wrong, incidentally :P

Nebraska is half good but doesn't deserve the plaudits it gets as the Springsteen album it's cool to like.

The rest is pretty much DUD.

Nevermind that Born in the USA was my first record not meant to be played on the Fisher Price record player (with the STEEL NEEDLE)

Nevermind Tracks Nevermind the fact that Born to Run is one of the best driving albums ever when your top is down and it's summer and the road between Ventura and home stretches out and empty at night with no cops...

Nevermind he has out Dylan-ed Dylan

Nevermind that he can outrage The Man as he pushes the dark side of life. (41 Shots)

Nevermind the line "The record company Rosie, JUST GAVE ME A BIG ADVANCE!"

Nevermind the Live box set, reminding us just how powerful he was

Nevermind Time and Newsweek

Nevermind Thunder-Fucking-Road

Nevermind The cover of Jersey Girl

Nevermind Tracks

Nevermind the MTV Unplugged set where he scrapped the entire notion of an acoustic show and just plugged in and tore down the house

Nevermind everyone on this list who called him a dud.

well, Bruce isn't *that* bad! ;)

La Bruce just collectively calls to my mind a stunted bastard vision of music that presumes he was the sole carrier of the 'spirit of rock and roll truth' that the Beatles and Stones 'started' in the sixties. A CLAIM I HAVE ENCOUNTERED MORE THAN ONCE, though thankfully not here, and happily never from the man's own lips either, at least to my knowledge. Without that rhetoric I would just shrug and ignore him for somebody more interesting, but with it, frankly, he becomes a very very useful target to kick against. Perhaps only a straw man, but one I wouldn't mind seeing go up in flames.

The boy has fallen off of late, but... I'm reminded of the Bangs article where he describes how he dismissed this Maoist band as sounding like Bruce, and the band replied "oh, good, the working class like that stuff" or something of the sort, and I'm reading this thinking -- no. no. no. The correct answer is "oh, good. Bruce fucking rocks!"

What I appreciate about Bruce is how he can capture the majesty of a major chord. How so many of his songs have the same progression, but you don't realize it 'till you try to play 'em yourself. How he can take gospel music and write it to a girl instead. And yes, more of them damn anthems.

I mean.. I know that anthems aren't an alien concept to the UK -- after all, The Who were full of them. But maybe British anthems are a different type a "get off of my cloud" or "sod off" type, more cynical and pissy than dreamy and wide-eyed. Maybe this is, after all, because America is The Big Country, The Great Bitch, et cet. Maybe to get America you have to get just how there's always somewhere you might go, maybe.

Along these lines, "Not Fade Away" which is a novel by Jim Dodge is a great rock road story, sort of like the lighter side of Richard Hell's "Go Now" or the more earnest(?) side of Bruce McCullough's "Doors Fan" sketch (on his album, Shame-Based Man). Yes. Get that spirit of the open highway.

I will say, though, that I do lack a car and have never had one. That might serve as a better explanation. ;-)

I wish I wasn't misinterpreting.

Inspirational in some ways. I have often felt that England needed a Springsteen, albeit not just a a copycat 'rocker'; I mean, someone who would write about all the lost and found small-town lives. But to be fair, I suppose there is already a UK tradition here: the probably Jarvis Cocker is a case in point.

1. they don't understand that he's actually not as "pro-america" as they might think he is

2. they don't have as close a connection to "old school" code (which includes "old school" rock)

3. they are mostly college kids on their way up to some office job or whatever that is removed (if not far removed) from the "underworld" (the "blue collar" or "real" world) to get the lyrical sentiments

4. well, and...sometimes people just don't like something 'cause they just don't like it

I, however, do not apply to any of those 4. For I actually do "get" some of the appeal of Bruce (albeit, it took my until my mid or late twenties to get there). Sure, his overly sentimental (downright broadway or maudlin) look at the working class can be a bit (or a bunch) too much. And sure, his music can be too simple and/or too derivitive. But, that's a part of the whole. Familiarity in both music and lyrics, is a large part of the appeal of his stuff (and those like him, ala Mellencamp, etc). He just had the concept to put nearly a whole career on the working class/blue collar life like no other has (not in such a wide reaching broad sense, at least - other than Mellencamp, but Bruce did it a bit better and first).

Classics:

Having said all that, 'Nebraska' and 'Ghost of Tom Joad' are the only two full albums that I would declare anywhere near a "classic" state of existence (with 'Nebraska' being the one clear-cut vote). Many of the rest of his 70's and 80's albums have some good solid worthy singles on them, but. I can't go so far as to get 'The River' (for example) anywhere near a "classic" nod. That one, in particular, I find to be overrated (though still having the wonderful track "Stolen Car" and the title track deserving of 'Nebraska'-like attention).

Anyways, I forgot to mention to huge (to the point of shadowing) element as to one of the why's (or why not's) of enjoy/appreciating Bruce. Which is: DRIVING. Cars and driving is such a central and/or reoccuring figure/subject in his work that...I can't believe I forgot to touch upon that (only after reading some of the others posts, darn it). But yea, I do LOVE to drive. Which also helps to explain the appeal of Springsteen (to me, at least).

*By the way, I do own that McCulloch album 'Shame Based Man' and...love it (some really funny stuff and one of the very rare comedy albums worthy of many plays - if not it's own discussion here on "I Love Music"...anyone?). Every single one of my girlfriends (one present, others past) hated it. "And if (after torching the stolen car) you can still hear the Doors playing...then you have become...a DOORS...FAN!" I'm not a Doors fan, however.

I hadn't listened to this record in a couple of years, but god, it still sounded great. Actually, I kept getting shivers down my spine when it was playing and it had me close to tears a few times (mostly on "Thunder Road" and "Backstreets.") Listening to this today finally settled an ILM debate for me: Music can never affect me quite as much now as it did when I was a teenager. No record I've heard in the last few years, including Loveless, has had as much affect on me as Born to Run did this morning, and I know it's not just because Born to Run is such a great album. This is a record that got to me when I was young and emotionally vulnerable in a way that I'm not anymore, at the age of 32. I still feel music very deeply and appreciate and enjoy a wider range of music than ever, but music doesn’t completely overpower me the way it did when I was 15. Oh well.

Springsteen is still a big classic, by the way, despite all the incredibly corny lines on Born to Run.

"candy's room" is the grebtest song ever written about being in love w. a prostitute when you sound a bit like david bowie

Is this a new genre? Cos that'd be fucking incredible.

I still love Bruce Springsteen. Put on Rosalita and you will see me go insane.

Dug up the Spin blurb for The Rising:

#14. With the president behaving like scary Uncle George, the concerned-parent role (post-9/11, pre- Gulf War II) was open, and Bruce Springsteen--like U2 a year ago--nominated himself for the job. But The Rising has none of U2's lingering cool, it's a boldly corny, plainspoken album by a songwriter who sincerely believes that working stiffs deserve a spokesman who's not a jingoistic yokel. (Charles Aaron)

Other 9/11 albums in the Top 40:

2. YHF
12. One Beat
13. The Blueprint 2
15. Scarlet's Walk
29. 18
36. Jerusalem

FWIW, the CD bloat is definitely a common complaint. It's always been a slog when I try to play it all, and IIRC Greil Marcus even began his column review with "It’s too long." (Brendan O'Brien pushed for a shorter album and to cut out at least a few songs but it was ultimately Springsteen's call - he wanted it to be long and sprawling.) Jimmy Guterman also said it was too long and proposed the following:

1. "Lonesome Day" 4:08
2. "Into the Fire" 5:04
3. "Nothing Man" 4:23
4. "Empty Sky" 3:34
5. "You're Missing" 5:10
6. "The Rising" 4:50
7. "Paradise" 5:39
8. "My City of Ruins" 5:00

I think he picked the eight strongest tracks, but I also think it's too short. I would reinstate "Worlds Apart" (otherwise by keeping only "Paradise" towards the very end, the album feel a bit too narrow in its worldview) and for my tastes I'd also reinstate "Mary's Place" even though most people seem to dislike it. Again, it's lyrically one of the weakest cuts, but I like how it’s a swinging throwback to early Springsteen which seems fitting for a wake in E Street land, as if the departed was someone they have known from way back when.

PJ has an interesting 9/11 connection, as she was in DC on that date and saw the plane hit the Pentagon from her hotel room.

also on that date, she won the mercury prize for stories from the city...

josh otm about it being one of the great 9/11 albums, regardless of when it was released.

I love "Don't Back Down on Our Love" so much. So glad he included this version of it on the album, since there are multiple takes bootlegged.

so will there be a distilled 2xCD of 2xLP version of this box for us mildly curious casual Bruce fans who don't have a spare $300 lying around?

I mean, for the mildly curious, it’s all streaming as of this morning.

I think I'll spend this morning listening to it while I kayak on a lake. #livingthebrucelife

#borntopaddle

#thunderrow

well, first disc listening is done. of course, I'm familiar with a lot of these songs from various bootlegs, but it's really nice to hear in this context. One of the things I appreciate most about it is actually all the relatively boilerplate or semi-familiar chord progressions, because they make you focus on the lyrics, which are awfully powerful at times.

like, you can definitely tell Bruce was doing a lot of reading of stuff like Raymond Carver.

Dipping into the second disc after an hour of paddling against the wind, and this is really the stuff. Despondent Bruce with synthesizers, chef's kiss.

Paddling into the tunnel of love, you might say.

One of the things I appreciate most about it is actually all the relatively boilerplate or semi-familiar chord progressions, because they make you focus on the lyrics, which are awfully powerful at times.

Excellent point. Similar idea came to me regarding Dylan, when I was thinking about how his backings tend to be there for him to ride along, not to solo or come up with new hooks and other earworms, etc. Given how much he puts in the words, it makes a lot of sense.

One of the things I appreciate most about it is actually all the relatively boilerplate or semi-familiar chord progressions, because they make you focus on the lyrics, which are awfully powerful at times.

This sentence made me laugh really hard, because it's a perfect expression of the exact opposite of what I like or seek out in music. "Just gimme something super basic and conventional, no surprises, so I can listen to the words."

That kind of articulates why then-veteran jazz producer Tom Wilson was reluctant to produce Dylan, claiming he didn't think much of folk music, and also why he changed his mind with Dylan.

first disc already catches my heart because i love how ‘83 Bruce sounds, goddamn I love his clear husky voice in this time period <3

and Dont Back Down On Our Love is a killer

yes! I love just hearing his voice from '83, it's so beautifully sad.

all of this is so good! what an amazing release.

DBDOYL is amazing, a proper “you were keeping this????” surprise. It sounds like an 80s Status Quo pop hit. I love it.

its wild, like Bruce has spent his life creating what feels like an endless caralog of these, idk, fucking diamonds, songs that feel so perfectly & lovingly & carefully crafted and then turns out dude has a basement full of discarded emeralds, rubies & sapphires?
like wtf my dude, these cant all be real
you did all THIS too?

and i just keep thinking of the weird confidence of that, like no this doesnt feel right, this is the wrong tone, not this but that … like that he can CHOOSE between all these jewels

like i always felt like he tapped into some kind of firehose main when he appealed to the muse for this first record but this makes that even more true than i ever realized

i love that we have him, what a fucking gift he has

*catalog

This one, from the Streets of Philadelphia sessions, really sticks with me, even though it's clearly half-finished and feels like the lyrics would be sharpened a bit more in a final version. But wow, so dark, and that simple line and concept ("Maybe I don't know you like I thought I did") feels like it's always existed, but I've never heard it in a song before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZCDvsc_74c

I have a road trip coming up, if somebody is making or has made a playlist of the best stuff from all of this, please let me know!

do the work tipsy jfc
(jk jk <3)

tbh the full set probably would cover the whole trip.

streets of philadelphia sessions is wonderful

so will there be a distilled 2xCD of 2xLP version of this box for us mildly curious casual Bruce fans who don't have a spare $300 lying around?

https://brucespringsteen.store/products/lost-and-found-selections-from-the-lost-albums-cd

I haven't gone beyond the first disc yet - since they're separate albums I keep feeling like I need to come to them separately or it will all get muddled up in my mind. The '83 songs are amazing.

"Don't Back Down On Our Love" is an old favorite from the bootlegs, but I was still surprised by how powerful it sounded here. "I want to weep but I'm broke inside and the tears won't run / I want to sleep but there ain't no dream and the sleep won't come" is a truly amazing couplet; how do you have a song like that and keep it in the vault for 42 years?

"Don't Back Down" (different song) lines up interestingly with "Stand On It" and "Janey Don't You Lose Heart." There seems to have been a part of Bruce that really needed these "hang on you can get through this" songs at this point in his life. He kept writing them, and they're all good, and yet none of them made the cut for actual albums.

"One Love" is new to me, and I think it encapsulates a lot of the power of this set. Because at least 50% of it is throwback pop pastiche heavy on the Buddy Holly, and yet it's so suffused with the dark, depressive, immediately identifiable voice of '83 Bruce, and so tangled up with different musical influences that don't quite seem to go together, that the effect is mesmerizingly weird. So different from the "Promise" box set, where his throwback pop pastiches just sound sort of empty because he hasn't got enough of himself into them.

The little lyrical differences in the demo of "My Hometown" are fascinating: you can see Springsteen taking an already almost perfect song and tweaking it until it's exactly what he wants. I kind of wish he's kept the "Little Texas tracks," with their distinctive Freehold reference, that got changed to the more universal "railroad tracks," though I can see why he made the change. Kate was originally Mary! This blows my mind for some reason. In this version, it's the narrator and Mary together taking the son out for a drive to say goodbye to the town, rather than just the narrator; you can see him changing it to make for a neater bookend with the opening image. And then there's a final couplet that's weaker than the rest and gets cut.

streets of philadelphia sessions is wonderful

I'd love a stand alone release of this with the title track included

My Hometown is interesting to me even from the effect of lowering the register (or changing key?) (whatever the musically-accurate description of that is)

it really changes the song like day to night, from naive nostalgia to rueful ruminating

I agree with that assessment of Maybe I Don't Know You as a familiar sentiment and yet still weirdly novel. It's the economy of the storytelling, I suspect.

My Hometown is interesting to me even from the effect of lowering the register (or changing key?) (whatever the musically-accurate description of that is)

yeah he dropped the key a minor third from demo (which is in C) to album version (in A). definitely has a different feel, but i think part of it is that he just found a more comfortable key for his voice.

Casino boys lol

just started listening to the Streets of Philadelphia sessions, tempering my expectations because "Blind Spot" didn't do much for me, but wow, "Something in the Well" is impressive.

As a non-completist, do I need to sit and listen to this whole thing or instead just wait for people to cherrypick their favorites into playlists or something.

I loved the Nashville disc, so as far as I'm concerned at the very least, the Philadelphia sessions, the Nashville sessions, and the 83 sessions are all worthwhile, the first three discs on the set.

“She smiled and said something stupid/ I didn’t hear a sound” is a Bruce couplet gone bad

(xpost, actually, disc 1, 2 and 4)

Okay, the Streets of Philadelphia album is amazing. No wonder Bruce has talked it up so much over the years. Agree about wanting to see a standalone release with the title track.

"We Fell Down" is particularly good imo, one of those songs that just instantly sounds like a classic.

One thing I like about these lyrics; they have some of the unpredictability of early Bruce. Listening to "Something in the Well," I was prepared for the metaphor to just kind of stay there and be repeated and never resolved. But then it's revealed that he knows there's something in the well because he put it there, and then eventually he's lying naked in the dirt listening to the trees talk, and I'm genuinely fascinated as to where this is going.

It's so interesting to me that Bruce had something of this caliber lying around - essentially a second Tunnel of Love - and suppressed it for so long. I don't buy the explanation that his audience wasn't ready for another dark relationship album from him, because Human Touch/Lucky Town aren't really dark relationship albums; they're not really anything albums. I can't really picture a scenario where this isn't hailed as a return to form. It seems far more likely to me that he was worried about the effect it would have on his marriage to release something that could easily be seen as another breakup album. And if that's the case, what a choice! I mean, when he's talked about prioritizing his family over his work during the 90s, he's said or implied that this meant just not spending as much time in the studio, not working as hard to get things just right. If it actually meant writing a really good, dark album, and then just sitting on it for decades - well, that's a level of sacrificing art to family that's pretty impressive imo.

oh i can’t wait to hear that one. it sounds like my dream bruce album

I find it pretty remarkable that the Nashville sessions, which is a real hoot(enanny), apparently occurred under a cone of silence and none of the musicians involved spoke a word about it, as far as I know. Maybe they did?

I’m looking over my kids schoolwork from this year and thinking about my flawed relationship with my so and “brilliant disguise” came on and I started weeping

Caryn Rose now has a write-up on Tracks II: https://www.salon.com/2025/07/08/bruce-springsteen-maps-the-treasures-of-his-own-music-vault/

FWIW, I'm not sure if this is reflective for most listeners, but I get the feeling the reactions to each disc likely echo the reactions one might have to the previously-released recordings associated with each one. I enjoy discs 1, 2, 4 and 5 just as much as I enjoy their associated albums (or singles in the case of disc 2), though to be fair disc 4 is quite a departure in mood from Tom Joad. I was never a fan of Western Stars - there's maybe four cuts that I really enjoy but not so much the rest - and I have the same reservations about disc 6 that I had about the lesser tracks on that album. Disc 3 is something of an outlier - I'm actually not big on most soundtrack music as I much prefer to listen to music designed for films or musicals with the accompanying work - so even though I mildly enjoy disc 3 and most of it involves actual songs rather than a score, I can't shake the feeling that it's only one element of a much larger work that never happened. Last disc is a bit uneven on first listen, but that doesn't feel surprising given that it's really a compilation, not a lost album or one set of related sessions.

I like disc 6 - Springsteen "Twilight Hours" album of orchestra-supported depressing 1950s like noir American songbook ballads w/ a touch of Jimmy Webb (from Tracks II the Lost Albums) works for me despite not many respites from the teary tempos

My general takeaway is that as good as much of this stuff is, I totally get why he sat on it. Like, there are some amazing individual songs, but where would he possibly have put (for example) "The Klansman"? And after "Western Stars," why would he want to put out another "Western Stars"? And for the "Nebraska"-worthy tracks like "Richfield Whistle," one of the reasons that album is so incredible is that there is nothing else quite like it in his catalog. I mean, I guess I could see it or "Unsatisfied Heart" ending up on "Tunnel of Love" in some form - they suit the mood - but I'm glad they're not on there.

Another way to look at it is that as hit or miss as his albums would eventually be by the '90s, I've come away from this project respecting his eye toward obsessive revision and cohesive (at least in intent) statements. While I don't always agree with or like what he did release, I can completely understand why he didn't release this particular stuff. A lot of it needs more work, if only to determine how or where the songs might work together. And I guess the answer we've gotten is basically that he never got around to it, and this belated set is the best effort we'll get.

Nice essay here about "4th of July (Sandy)," a lovely song I never thought much about:

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/bruce-springsteen/in-1973-bruce-springsteen-wrote-the-greatest-summer-song-ever

^good excuse to post the live version of Sandy from their show at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1975. I love videos from that show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_lSDQy03LY

such a good show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1V0ncuInHc

Springsteen and Kings of Leon joined Zach Bryan onstage at his stadium show in New Jersey and they did “Atlantic City” together. It’s ok