‘The Angel’ is a quiet piano ballad that kicks off side two of Bruce Springsteen’s debut album, 1973’s Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. Half of the album’s tracks featured a full band while half were performed solo, this one being an obvious example of the latter.
Springsteen was very proud of the song and (for some reason) vowed never to play it live, though he caved and played it in a London show in the mid-90s, then again as part of a live performance of the full Greetings album in 2009.
Despite starting his recording career four years earlier than Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen has released 11 fewer studio albums. The Boss dropped Letter To You, his 20th, late last month.
The album finds the 71-year-old legend in a contemplative mood, mourning the deaths of past band members and looking back nostalgically at the way music shaped his life.
‘Leah’ os a lovely grace note in the middle of Bruce Springsteen’s 2005 album Devils & Dust, an otherwise somber collection. This song isn’t exactly ‘Walking on Sunshine,’ but compared to some of the downers on this record, it may as well be.
Springsteen has released a lot of good albums in the 15 years since Devils & Dust, but I’d call this record his last great one. It has an intimacy and power you don’t encounter very often.
Today’s Random Weekend selection, like so many of them, is a reminder that I haven’t listened to this artist in too long.
In this case it’s Bruce Springsteen, whose 2012 album Wrecking Ball continued a strong run of material that started in the late 2000s. As with its predecessors, Magic and Working On a Dream, I really enjoyed this album upon its release but stopped listening after awhile.
Last week I featured a song from Bruce Springsteen’s 1973 album The Wild, the Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle. That classic album was Bruce’s sophomore effort, and amazingly he had released his debut the very same year.
In January of 1973, Springsteen hit the scene with Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ, an ambitious collection of wordy Dylan-esque folk songs sped up and set to a beat. Right out of the gate, Springsteen cast himself as a sensitive poet for working class dreamers, a mantle he would carry for more than five decades.
Meet Me In Montauk 