Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 2005…
#5 – Devils & Dust – Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen’s 13th studio album, Devils & Dust, came three years after the celebrated The Rising but was more in the style of the album that preceded that one, 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad.
The other touchpoint would be 1982’s Nebraska, suggesting that Springsteen has one of these somber acoustic albums in him every decade.
The revelation in yesterday’s post that Bruce Springsteen has never had a #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 got me wondering how many other major artists are in the same boat.
Turns out it’s quite an extensive and surprising list, long enough for me to dedicate the next three weeks to the topic.
Grab your tie-dye and bell bottoms because we’ll be spending the next month exploring the albums of 1975, in the latest installment of the Decades series. I’ve covered the first five years of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s and now I’m wrapping back around to focus on the middle year of each decade.
As usual, I’ll start by counting down my personal favorite albums from the year then highlight some of the critically and commercially popular releases with which I’m less familiar.
Last week I wrote about my five favorite albums from the year 1984, as part of my recurring Decades series. This week I’ll shift to five albums from that year that I know primarily through their singles. I can’t say I’m familiar enough with any of these albums to include them in my personal list of faves, but I know enough to separate them from the true unknowns to come.
It probably seems crazy that I’m including Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. among this group. After all, it’s by far his most popular album, 15X Platinum in the U.S. with sales north of 30 million worldwide.
I wasn’t really aware of Bruce Springsteen as a career artist when I was 15 years old, the year 1987’s Tunnel of Love came out.
Of course, I was aware of the runaway smash Born in the U.S.A. (1984) from its radio and MTV airplay, but I had no concept of his prior work or his importance to the rock music landscape. And this album missed my radar entirely until years later.
Meet Me In Montauk 