Round of 64: (28) Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream vs. (37) Bruce Springsteen - Born2Run Bracket • Page 5

Counterpoint: "Glory Days" is fucking great and is one of the best songs ever written about squandered youth and missed dreams. The last verse is so devastating and so funny at the same time. Bruce wrote a lot of songs about protagonists that never got the American dream he envisioned on "Born to Run," but that one works so well because it packs all that failure into a song that sounds like a valedictory rave-up. Like a lot of Born in the USA, it's full of contradictions and way deeper than most people give it credit for.

 

I mean, don't get me wrong, I love The Rising for a lot of the reasons you're praising it. But it also underserves the E Street Band with an overly airbrushed production sound, drags a bit as a full one-sit listen, and lacks an all-time top 20 Bruce song. I actually might take all eight BTR songs over my favorite Rising song, give or take a "Lonesome Day."

 

Two more reasons BTR is best: best Clarence, best Bittan. Darkness is the gnarlier guitar album, but the sax and the piano are so central to what I love about Bruce’s music that the album that centers those components most is automatically going to get a big bump from me.

 

I agree with this in as much as it’s a clever song. I just think it’s pretty grating. It’s almost the other side of the coin of the title track - that one’s also clever, even more obviously so, but it’s also just triumphant sounding as hell. The sound is both necessary for the message and why it’s awesome, whereas on Glory Days it’s (I think) swinging for both and only really connects on the former. I’m not as dismissive of it as Pat but I think it’s a weak spot on the record for sure.

 

Both of these are basically bang the fuck on what I would have responded. Haha

 

Of those two songs, I actually think "Glory Days" is more successful. To each their own, though!

 

I would like to ask “Glory Days” haters if they like baseball, because hearing that song at a game where it A. Whips a crowd up on a hot summer day and B. Satirizes MOST of the people singing along is a very unique pleasure. Haha

 

i would say there's probably a direct correlation between me no longer playing baseball and me no longer really liking the song lol