Top 25 Springsteen Songs: Honorable Mentions, Part 2
"We learned more from a three-minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school."
Only one artist could elicit two rounds of honorable mentions before getting into my actual, proper list of their top 25 songs (in my estimation) and that is, of course, Bruce Springsteen. We’ve already gone through our first batch of honorable mentions…
So let’s go ahead and talk about that second batch!
“Dancing in the Dark”
The lower number of songs from Born in the USA that make it onto my actual Top 25 list might surprise some readers. While that album is my favorite of that 82-84 blockbuster run of albums in popular music (Thriller, Purple Rain, Like a Virgin, etc.), I just find other stretches of Bruce’s career much more interesting and captivating. But even if it’s slightly lower in my estimation than it might be for others, I certainly recognize its greatness.
Though the song has probably become a bit overshadowed by the famous music video….
“Dancing in the Dark” is a great and much more interesting song than its broad popularity and of-its-time musical production and sound would indicate.
You sit around getting older
There's a joke here somewhere, and it's on me
I'll shake this world off my shoulders
Come on, baby, the laugh's on me
There’s a weight and seriousness in the lyrics of this song that you wouldn’t expect from a Springsteen track that broke through into the popular consciousness.
It’s also the first Springsteen song I remember hearing (in my dad’s car off of the 1995 Greatest Hits album) so I feel somewhat sentimental about it because of that.
“No Surrender”/”Brothers Under the Bridge (83)”
I’m linking these two because they overlap in a lot of ways. One is a track that made it onto Born in the USA, the other an outtake from those sessions that ended up on the Tracks box set. Lyrically and sonically, they come from the same place. The desire “to grow young again” and “learn[ing] more from a three-minute record than [they] ever learned in school” in “No Surrender” and the protagonists of “Brothers Under the Bridge (83)” with their “walls were covered with pictures of the cars [they’d] get… listen[ing] and wait[ing] for that highway to rumble and quake” as these street racers came into their town.
The music is similar across each song too—that hard-charging rock and roll filtered through that produced sheen that was just the sound in the early-to-mid 1980s. You also have the repeated “li li li li” in both songs, or some form of it in each song. “Brothers” does have a Clarence Clemons saxophone solo, which is a key distinction in its favor.
“Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)”
The only reason this one doesn’t crack my Top 25 (and I think the same thing could be said for “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”) is that it’s a song I really love in concert (and especially on the pre-Reunion tours, and especially 1975-1980) but am somewhat ambivalent about the album version. But those live versions… those are revelatory.
When I think about great backing bands and how I would distinguish between the different ones, what puts the E Street band at the top of those rankings can be heard in the breakdown/introduce the band stretch in the 1975 performance at the Hammersmith Oden in London.
That’s a band that is EXTREMELY locked in. That is a band that is hungry and ready to rock everyone’s world for the next few hours. If you ask me why I ride-or-die with the E Street Band, it’s right there.
“4th of July Asbury Park (Sandy)”
Another track off The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, another one where it’s the in-concert performances that I really love and listen to the most. But it’s such a great song of the Jersey Shore.
It’s also a song that shows off one of the elements that gives the E Street Band its distinctive sound—the accordion. Danny Federici’s playing gives the song its mysterious, seedy energy that you associate with boardwalks and where “the cops finally busted Madame Marie for tellin' fortunes better than they do.” There’s this synchronicity between the music and the lyrics that transports you to this shoreside location in middle of the summer.
I think the band really gets it right with the performances that were part of The River tour, like you hear at this New Year’s Eve show in 1980.
“Badlands”
It speaks to the strength of Springsteen’s oeuvre that a song like “Badlands,” which for another artist might be the greatest song they ever wrote, is just an honorable mention. But I couldn’t leave off this anthem that kicks off Darkness on the Edge of Town. It’s a song with some of the most life-affirming, fist-in-the-air powerful lyrics the Boss has ever produced.
For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive
You’ve got a great chorus, a guitar solo, and a Clarence Clemons saxophone solo. What’s not to love?
There are so many great live performances of this song, but I really enjoy this version from December 29th 1980 that features a beautiful intro of the theme from Once Upon a Time in the West played by Roy Bittan.
We’ve made it through the honorable mentions! Next up, we’ll be getting into the actual list itself…