Worst/Best/Overrated/Underrated Bruce Springsteen songs/albums?

Did he really say that? Hard to imagine strangers/fans coming up to him and begging him to make a 9-11 album so they could have "closure."

 

I agree that Magic is generally over-looked and underappreciated. It's the last Springsteen album I really liked and listened to a lot.
I tried to like Wrecking Ball, but I think Bruce was trying too hard to make a Big Political Statement at the expense of the music itself.
And it said something that three of the best songs were essentially re-treads and previously available in other versions.

 

I have to say, regarding Lucky Town, I think it's a fantastic batch of songs (excluding "Leap Of Faith", which sucks) that Bruce and whoever produced it tried their very best to destroy. The hideous early '90s drum production wears thin quickly, and Bruce's half-assed barking and whiny, nasally crooning gets tiresome immediately. It reminds me of Jagger on Dirty Work, barking his way through songs that demand a more delicate performance. There is variety here, but the alternative is just as ugly.

But the songs themselves I find to be quite good. "Leap Of Faith" is awful, but the rest is quite strong. "Lucky Town" has a great guitar riff that reminds me of REM's "Country Feedback", and any song that reminds me of "Country Feedback" is doing several things right. "Better Days" is a good opener, "Local Hero" is funny with just the right amount of self-parody, "The Big Muddy" is very haunting, "Living Proof" is one of the best "new life" songs I've ever heard, and "Should I Fall Behind" is gorgeous. If Bruce hadn't done all of his vocals with a cold and a clothespin on his nose, and if they had remembered all the work that went into recording the snare drum in 1978, and if "Leap Of Faith" had been eliminated, I think this could have been a near-masterpiece.

 

Production generally sucks on every Springsteen album (excepting Darkness). so it's baked in the cake by this point.

 

I think "Lucky Town" has plenty of good songs: the title track, "Better Days", "If I Should Fall Behind", "Souls of the Departed" off the top of my head.

"Human Touch" has some good songs, too - title track, "I Wish I Were Blind", "Gloria's Eyes" - but also has more clunkers and seems more "generic". "HT" feels like Bruce's stab at early 90s pop relevance, while "LT" feels more "real"...

What kind of phone did it make you? Cordless? Princess? Flip?

I don't think Bruce ignored "Magic" too badly in 2007-08. At the very first concert of the tour, he did 8 "Magic" songs - and given that this was a short-for-Bruce 2-hour, 20-minute show, that's a fairly high percentage of the concert.

By the final show in Kansas City, he still did 5 "Magic" songs - not bad given that he tends to whittle down "new" songs as tours progress.

Compare with "WOAD" tour: 6 songs at first show, but only two at the last concert!

And FWIW, Bruce did 11 (!) "Rising" songs at the first 2002 show and still played 8 at the final concert in 2003. Not entirely surprising given what a hit the album was!

"Wrecking Ball" left me semi-cold as an album and I can't claim any of the songs impress me live. The album felt forced to me, like Bruce felt he needed to comment on the then-current economic situation and pushed himself in that direction, whether it worked or not...

It's clear that he intends to play the title track forever. I'm not sure I've attended an E Street show from 2002 to date where he didn't play it. Maybe - not gonna check - but across the nearly 100 E Street concerts I've attended from 2002 to date, it's been at the vast majority of them!

Can't stand to hear "Sunny Day" or "Mary's Place", either. The former is ruined by all the Art Linkletter moments, and the latter wore out its welcome during the 2002 tour - he played a roughly 16-hour version of it, so even though it's shorter live now, the scars remain!

 

Too lazy to do an exhaustive search, but here's what Wiki says:

"It's been rumored that Springsteen got the inspiration for the album a few days after the 9/11 attacks, when a stranger in a car stopped next to him, rolled down his window and said: "We need you now."[2] Springsteen also told this story to journalist Mark Binelli in the August 22, 2002 issue of Rolling Stone."

If Bruce said it, not sure why Wiki calls it a "rumor"!

 

Those early '90s albums were the worst, though.

 

If everybody says Born in the USA is overrated, then it should be called underrated instead. I know the huge sales made it the easiest target for that category.

 

So much has been written about Born in the USA through the years that it can't be considered either over-rated or under-rated by this point.
Or it's both.
But it remains his biggest seller and it's the only Springsteen album many people own.

 

have not heard most of springsteen's work in decades.i can't imagine he made many records better than his first four or so,
not exactly sure where nebraska fit's in.my faves are darkness and nebraska but there is nothing wrong with the first three either! i actually liked high hopes quite a bit.

 

Once you've been crowned as the future of rock'n'roll, how can anything you do be considered "overhyped" ?

I certainly remember when The Rising came out and the tornadic press around it but there's a lot of hype, unwarranted or otherwise, around every Springsteen-related release whether it's new material, a children's book he has some vague connection to or a tour. I listened to the album then and pretty much filed it as I've always had a rocky relationship with his music and his persona. It's only fairly recently, with the initial hype well and truly faded away, that I revisited that record and decided to invest the time required to give it a few listens. Yes, the production is typical Springsteen ( not great ) but as a songwriting package, it towers ( oops ) above everything which has followed it in his catalogue. My initial reaction to the record was that it was just too long and that the little sunbeams like Waiting On A Sunny Day, Let's Be Friends ( Skin To Skin ) and Mary`s Place sounded out of place in the context of the weightier stuff. I`ve since come to the conclusion that those fluffier bits serve the purpose of giving the album as a whole some balance and a little air, preventing The Rising from taking its place on the shelf next to Nebraska as one of The Boss's "suicide records". The trickiest part of The Rising is that balance it maintains between somber contemplation of horrific loss and trying to provide some sense of hope and uplift, all while keeping the baying of the revenge-hungry dogs of war at bay, leaving the knee-jerk jingoism to the likes of Toby Keith. The anger is there in lines like " I want an eye for an eye..." but there'll be no " Bob your head, ragtop" easy catharsis here.

Like you, it doesn't strike me that Springsteen was attempting to cash in on the 9-11 attacks like some others did, much to their lasting shame. To me, it seems that he was trying to get his head around it just like everybody else. That being said, I also have no trouble believing that he felt compelled to offer his take on the situation, that, like Paul Simon's Joe DiMaggio, a nation had turned its lonely eyes to Bruuuuuuce. I do think he views himself as America's de facto poet laureate ( - with guitars !!! ) but I think a lot of his fans do, too. For better or for worse.

D.D.

 

Big whoop. That's like what, a third of the record ?

D.D.

 

It's 73% of the album, Mr. Funny Man!

Across 30 "Rising" tour shows, I heard 14 of the 15 songs - never got "Let's Be Friends", which apparently he only has played once ever!

 

I agree with most of your points, especially the last one about "viewing himself as America's de facto poet laureate. " I do happen to think he is a modest man--or sincerely believes himself to be--but so many second and third rank college professors who write books about him , and media "thinkers" who like to attach themselves to him or his music for their own purposes and agendas, have foisted the poet laureate title on him that he probably --if he doesn't outright believe it himself--thinks it's his duty to play that role which they have assigned to him. That's why he feels the need to weigh in on weighty topics --that are outside his field of expertise--from time to time. He feels it's expected of him, and like doing three-hour plus shows , he tries to deliver the goods.

 

Agree. It's like the self-expectations under which U2 works. They feel like they always have to be the biggest biggest biggest rock band in the world, and it clearly impacts their output.

Kinda makes me wish they'd just do what they want to do and not worry about whether it'll dominant the world or whatever...

 

I think they've reached a point where this is what they want to do. Their egos demand it. Once you've rode the tiger for a few laps around the track,...

D.D.

 

Most underrated songs.

Incident On 57th Street
It's So Hard To Be A Saint In The City
Meeting Across The River
Candy's Room
One Step Up/Two Steps Back

Most underrated albums.

The first two

Worst songs.

Dancing In The Dark
Glory Days
Cadillac Ranch
Ramrod
Backstreets

Most overrated songs.

Born To Run
Thunder Road
Badlands

Most Overrated albums.

Born To Run
Nebraska
The Ghost Of Tom Joad

 

Bruce's writing on both Nebraska and BITUSA is great. The long, complex narratives are gone, replaced with simple melodic structures and tight lyrics - not a word seems wasted. I think that's part of why they resonated with the general listener. In retrospect, it's amazing that songs like "My Hometown" and "I'm on Fire" were top 10 singles - they're so small in scope and seemingly unambitious by his standards. But so is a lot of great popular music.

 

I made a mistake, love Magic and think it deserves to be in Springsteen's top ten best. It's Devils and Dust I should have wrote.

 

I get that - to a degree. But it's not like U2 is the only mega-successful band who eventually had to accept they weren't #1 anymore.

Heck, the subject of this thread falls into that category - though unlike U2, Bruce actively tried to distance himself from his commercial peak. 1987/88 offered a clear retrenching for Bruce.

Granted, one could argue U2 did something similar when they made "Achtung", but I think they still aspired to be the biggest band in the world, whereas Bruce seemed to really want to scale back his public profile.

At no point has U2 ever attempted to shrink from the spotlight!

 

What annoys me about Springsteen--and this likely is just my perception, which may well not quite be reality--is that he is a man surrounded by a support organization of publicity apostles who promise face time with the messiah, er, the Boss, in exchange for favorable press coverage, whether it be a five-star review in Rolling Stone, written by Dave Marsh (who is married to a high-ranking Springsteen toady) or the cover of Time, Vanity Fair, Esquire, etc. So I don't exactly buy it when Springsteen does this "aw, shucks" bit expressing discomfort with media attention and hype that people on his payroll orchestrate. (Most notorously, he attempted to distance himself from his agreement with Walmart giving them an exclusive compilation CD to sell concurrent with his 2009 Super Bowl appearance...by having his number one toady, Jon Landau, publically attempt to rationallize the deal.)

For all I know, every major artist has people on the payroll doing exactly what Springsteen's people do. I don't know why the Thrill Hill organization annoys me as much as it does, because I honestly don't believe that Springsteen is in any way a bad person. At the same time, however, it was certainly Springsteen's decision to hire the man who called him "the future of rock and roll" and make him his manager.

 

Answering before I read most of the thread to avoid being unduly influenced by it...

Songs:
Best: Backstreets
Worst: Probably something from Working on a Dream - I never even learned the names of most of the songs
Overrated: BITUSA (really, it's fairly easy to mistake it for a patriotic song if you ask me; the chorus is a lot easier to understand than the verses)
Underrated: This Hard Land (definitely should have made it to a canonical album)

Albums:
Best: Darkness
Worst: Working on a Dream
Overrated: Tunnel of Love
Underrated: Ghost of Tom Joad

 

Well, he just stated it again in his auto biography... maybe it is true? He says it was a guy on a car who shouted through the opened window...

 

Did the guy mention 9/11? or did he just say "we need you now."
Maybe the guy just wanted a new album.

 

You must be joking...