Bruce Springsteen Band • Page 71

I love this song so much. Sounds like an evolution of what he was doing on Tunnel of Love. The Streets of Philadelphia sessions is my most anticipated off tracks 2.

 

Yeah this is very good

 

HYB

 

yo what the heckkkkkk. this Streets of Philadelphia Sessions disc is going to be MAGIC. sounds almost like Everything But The Girl.

 

Another one, sounds like a Devils & Dust outtake.

 

I am extremely excited for next week but these album covers are all so bad haha

 

In fairness, many (most?) of his album covers ARE bad.

 

Yeah he’s had two good album covers since 1990 and one of those is a greatest hits haha (the other is Wrecking Ball)

well assuming we don’t count old shows that get put out as live albums like the No Nukes or Hammersmith ones

 

The thing is that he often has better photos or visuals, either on the back cover or in the liner notes, that he could have used. Like, this would have been a way cooler cover for Western Stars.

 

wrecking ball????????

 

I’m not gonna go to bat for it but it’s unobjectionable in my book. Certainly not as bad as say Letter to You

 

I know it's an EP and it's not groundbreaking or anything, but the American Beauty cover is aesthetically pleasing.

 

i would applaud after each song, thats for sure.

 

Salivating over this. Next weekend is going to rock.

 

can’t wait for tracks ii. in the meantime, we rank

1 Tunnel of Love
2 Nebraska
3 Darkness on the Edge of Town
4 The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
5 Born to Run
6 The River
7 Born in the USA
8 Letter to You
9 The Rising
10 Magic
11 Greetings from Asbury Park
12 Western Stars
13 Lucky Town
14 Working on a Dream
15 The Ghost of Tom Joad
16 Wrecking Ball
17 Devils & Dust
18 Human Touch
19 We Shall Overcome
20 Only the Strong Survive
21 High Hopes

 

1. Born to Run
2. Darkness on the Edge of Town
3. Born in the USA
4. The River
5. Tunnel of Love
6. The Rising
7. Nebraska
8. The Wild, The Innocent
9. Magic
10. Letter to You
11. Wrecking Ball
12. Western Stars
13. Greetings
14. Devils & Dust
15. Lucky Town
16. The Ghost of Tom Joad
17. Human Touch
18. We Shall Overcome
19. Only the Strong Survive
20. Working on a Dream
21. High Hopes

Some notes:

-At some point, Born in the USA really elevated for me. I almost put it at number 2.

-For a long time, I just looked at The Rising as "the 9/11 album," and thought it was a good (if flawed) response to that historic moment. The older I get, though, I just hear that album as such a powerful record about coping with tragedy and loss. Last four songs just level me emotionally more than any other part of his catalog.

-Lucky Town and Human Touch have definitely grown on me. I listen to my single-disc playlist of those albums pretty regularly.

-I almost don't know how to rank the two covers albums alongside everything else. I think both are really fun genre exercises, but are definitely less "essential."

-Working on a Dream and High Hopes (the latter of which @phaynes12 understandably forgot about) are the only two times in his catalog where it felt to me like he had nothing to say and no real point of view. The former, to me, is the ultimate "Obama won the presidency, everything's fixed now I guess" album, where all the urgency and anger on his other 2000s albums is almost completely gone. And High Hopes feels more bizarre now that Tracks II is coming. Like, if you had some of these songs we've heard in the archives, then why the hell did "Harry's Place" get surfaced?

 

i didn’t forget, it was last for me and i copy/pasted from a different post and missed copying the last line haha. bad bad bad record.

 

working on a dream isn’t a good album but outlaw pete alone elevates it over several of his others

 

"Outlaw Pete" and "The Last Carnival" are the only songs on that album I really like. I feel like "Outlaw Pete" promises something cool/different for Bruce that just does not emerge on the rest of the album, which has always been my biggest problem with it. That album should be more in the vein of Western Stars in terms of vibe, but ideally with more of the gonzo tall tale storytelling he was doing on "Pete." And "The Last Carnival" kind of fits in with that vibe/concept as well, which makes it even weirder that the rest of the album is mostly limp Wall of Sound pop songs with forgettable melodies AND forgettable lyrics. (The exception being "Queen of the Supermarket," which...I don't know how that one even exists.)

 

1. Darkness on the Edge of Town
2. Born in the USA
3. Born to Run
4. The River
5. Tunnel of Love
6. Magic
7. The Wild, the Innocent & the E-Street Shuffle
8. Nebraska
9. Lucky Town
10. Greetings from Asbury Park
11. The Rising
12. Letter to You
13. The Ghost of Tom Joad
14. Wrecking Ball
15. Western Stars
16. Human Touch
17. Seeger Sessions
18. Devils & Dust
19. Working on a Dream
20. High Hopes
21. Only the Strong Survive

I think this is correct for me, at least right now. As I get older the pre-Darkness 70s stuff just doesn’t draw my attention as much but the 80s and 00s stuff just gets more and more interesting. The last minute of Thunder Road still kicks as much ass as it always has but songs like, say, Cover Me that used to be just so-so songs in my book have a lot more to offer now.

And I will continue to beat the drum for Magic and Lucky Town until the day I perish

 

LOVE the ranking for Letter to You. Way way underpraised

 

high hopes is 100% a Tracks album of leftover songs and is by far his worst album