I wrote about Bruce Springsteen’s The River nearly five years ago finished my blog post by stating “I’ve read enough about The River to know that I have to hear it in full.”

That never happened, and I sit here now writing about this celebrated 1980 album with the same thought running through my head. The River was Springsteen’s fifth album, sandwiched between Darkness on the Edge of Town and Nebraska. It marries the somberness of those records with a pop sensibility that would show up again four years later on Born in the USA.

Springsteen says this album contains the seeds of much of the songwriting that followed it, including the marital conflict he explored so effectively on Tunnel of Love.

I said it then and I’ll say it again… I really need to listen to this album.