Bruce Springsteen has released 18 studio albums, many of them classics. But his sophomore record, released 42 years ago, may well remain his most ambitious.
The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle runs just seven songs long, but each of them is a sprawling left-field masterpiece. Best-known are ‘Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)’ and ‘4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),’ tracks that (like the whole album) perfectly capture the adolescent yearning of Springsteen’s New Jersey.
Bruce Springsteen’s 2007 album Magic is one of the most resonant artistic commentaries on the G.W. Bush years. It’s loaded with songs about economic and cultural disillusionment and tracks critical of the war in Iraq.
Springsteen’s gift in protest songs like today’s random SOTD is to make these political issues personal. ‘Devil’s Arcade’ is told, at least in part, from the perspective of the wife or girlfriend of an Iraq war veteran. She focuses on their intimate moments, not the violence of the war, but the effect is just as shattering.
My fourth favorite album of 1982 is Bruce Springsteen’s spare, unflinching acoustic record, Nebraska.
Springsteen originally recorded this batch of songs as demos on a 4-track recorder as a template for later E Street Band renditions. But Springsteen and his producers ultimately decided that the demo recordings captured the spirit of the record better and released them as the official album.
A Bruce Springsteen cover of Lorde’s ‘Royals’ sound like something you’d see on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show.
Who can forget the duet of ‘Whip My Hair Back and Forth’ between “Neil Young” and Springsteen on Fallon’s Late Night, after all?
(Not that I’m comparing ‘Royals,’ an excellent song, to ‘Whip My Hair Back and Forth,’ but a version by Springsteen seems just as likely.
Every song on Bruce Springsteen’s Devils & Dust lands like a shot to the gut by the protagonist of today’s Song of the Day.
The record is full of mournful tales of hard-luck characters beaten down by life but still struggling for some hint of redemption or, in the case of today’s protagonist, rest.
This album is more like a collection of short stories than a studio recording.
Meet Me In Montauk 