Top 25 Springsteen Songs: BTR and Darkness
We're getting into extremely rarified air here in the next installment of this countdown of my favorite songs by the Boss...
Not that we weren’t already dealing with some of the greatest songs in the history of popular music, but… we’ve really moved into some rarified air as we’re talking about tracks from Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town (and one from The River) that didn’t make it into the final top 5 in this post.
For any other artist, this Top 5 would be remarkable. I think of the heirs to Springsteen’s crown—Mellencamp, Bob Seger— and if they had songs like these… Don’t get me wrong, I love “Night Moves” but these are something else (and they’re not even my Top 5 favorites!).
“The Ties That Bind”
A track from The River, which also would’ve been the title track for the single-album version of that record, but we’re going to group it with the Darkness and Born to Run cuts.
It’s a bit like “Two Hearts” in the way it centers upon the connections between people—those ties that bind—and their importance.
You don't want nothin', don't need no one by your side
You're walkin' tough, baby, but you're walkin' blind
To the ties that bind
Sonically, it’s closer to Darkness than either aspects of The River (either the party/frat rock or the darker, more introspective tracks) but lyrically it’s a little more… not hopeful (there is hope at times on Darkness and I don’t think it’s worth being reductive) but that positivity is a bit more apparent.
“Ties” and “Jackson Cage,” on that first side of the first disc of The River, share some of the same DNA, to my ear at least though, again, that optimism is a little more present (“Jackson Cage” is even close to the world of Darkness). “Ties” also features a great guitar lick that anchors the song as well as a Clarence Clemons saxophone solo.
"Racing in the Street"
Much like “The River,” “Racing in the Street” is a tough rebuke for those who think Springsteen is just some kind of simple-minded singer only talking about cars like in a novelty 1960s track. It’s many a hardcore Springsteen fan’s favorite track because of the depth there as well as the way that the automobile and driving are transformed from this means of escape and redemption to something more nefarious.
Now, some guys, they just give up livin'
And start dying little by little, piece by piece
Some guys come home from work and wash up
Then go racin' in the street
This isn’t about freedom. The racing, the car, it’s a means of surviving and grinding through the toughness of existence for the protagonist.
The third verse, which I’ll put in its entirety here, is also an absolute emotional hammer.
I met her on the strip three years ago
In a Camaro with this dude from L.A
I blew that Camaro off my back
And drove that little girl away
But now there's wrinkles around my baby's eyes
And she cries herself to sleep at night
When I come home, the house is dark
She sighs, "Baby, did you make it all right?"
She sits on the porch of her daddy's house
But all her pretty dreams are torn
She stares off alone into the night
With the eyes of one who hates for just being born
For all the shut-down strangers and hot rod angels
Rumbling through this promised land
Tonight my baby and me, we're gonna ride to the sea
And wash these sins off our hands
The sadness and pain felt by the protagonist’s girlfriend, that she has “the eyes of one who hates for just being born” both articulates the way in which this kind of masculine/machismo of the street racing can inflict pain on their loved ones. It’s also, in the way it foreground’s the pain of a female figure, feminist (which I’m sure would come as a surprise to any Springsteen detractors). I also love the imagery of that final part of the verse, riding to the sea to “wash these sins off our hands.”
I remember I was driving to someone’s house for a party and listening to Darkness and I eventually hit this song. After it finished, I’d parked and was walking up to the house. When I got there, friends asked if I was al right. That’s how emotionally affecting “Racing in the Street” is. It’s a gut punch that very few artists could accomplish. It’s a testament to Springsteen’s greatness as a songwriter.
This is another song where, if I were using a kind of power rankings structure, would be in the Top 10. Through the vagaries of preference, it doesn’t get into the final top 5 but make no mistake, this is an all-timer. If I wanted to explain why I think Springsteen is not just a rock star or a popular music icon, that he’s a figure like Bob Dylan working in the wider literary universe, I would certainly use “Racing in the Street” as a major piece of evidence.
“Darkness on the Edge of Town"
It’s tough for me to separate the two tracks that close out Darkness on the Edge of Town (“Prove it All Night” and this one) but by a nose, “Darkness” makes it onto the list.
The sonic dynamics of “Darkness” are very distinct, as there’s some real quiet and then LOUD pitches reached like a Pixies song. The verses are so subdued and then the chorus is like a kick to the head, to reference what Springsteen said about the opening snare shot at the beginning of Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.”
It’s interesting because there’s much more of the… well, darkness that you get on something like “Racing in the Street,” yet there’s much more defiance in the face of that darkness.
The final chorus is an absolute favorite:
Tonight I'll be on that hill, 'cause I can't stop
I'll be on that hill with everything I got
Lives on the line where dreams are found and lost
I'll be there on time and I'll pay the cost
For wanting things that can only be found
In the darkness on the edge of town
Normally, I’ll post share the album version or a live recording. In a change of pace, I thought I’d share this recording I love of Father John Misty performing “Darkness” at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park.
Even as he’s become this kind of psychedelic, space-age crooner, Father John Misty can still tap into that essential rock-and-roll-ness.
"Jungleland"
We’re moving into the songs from Born to Run, and this is an epic one. It’s perhaps most famous for its transcendent Clarence Clemons saxophone solo. I can’t find where exactly, but someone (and it might have been Springsteen himself) described that solo as the sound of someone coming through something. Making it through. And within that saxophone solo you have that sound of struggle, of the ache, and then the transcendent, and then the kind of denouement.
But “Jungleland” is not just the saxophone solo. There’s the moment when the organ comes blaring in on the line “From the churches to the jails, tonight all is silent in the world…”
The lyrics are certainly on the more romantic side
Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades
Hustling for the record machine
The hungry and the hunted
Explode into rock'n'roll bands
It feels at times like it’s an update on West Side Story in its romantic extremity. But even if those things aren’t real or relatable, the feelings they evoke and depict are very real. They are lives of a louder desperation than Thoreau ever imaged. But it’s that same idea. That longing for a life that means more and what you do when you find so much of what’s around you fighting against that.
There are so many lines and lyrics that are great:
“Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge, drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain”
“In the parking lot the visionaries dress in the latest rage, inside the backstreet girls are dancing to the records that the DJ plays”
“Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz between what's flesh and what's fantasy, and the poets down here don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be”
And, in addition to all this, there’s a real rip-roaring guitar solo that anticipates where Springsteen would be heading on Darkness a few years later.
Normally, I try to find a live version, but Clarence’s saxophone playing on the album track is too perfect to not share.
"Backstreets"
In his review of Born to Run for Rolling Stone, Greil Marcus described “Backstreets” as “a song that begins with music so stately, so heartbreaking, that it might be the prelude to a rock & roll version of The Iliad.” I honestly have no idea what exactly that means, and yet I think it sounds so perfect.
It is a showcase for Roy Bittan and what he brings as the piano player for the E Street Band— this classical grandeur in the midst of the rock and roll world and stories of people on the margins of society.
It’s also a song that, like “Bobby Jean,” can be read in different ways. A song about a romance (is Terry short for Therese/Theresa? Is it about a same-sex relationship)? A song about a friendship? This goes against the lazy narratives focused on Springsteen’s simplicity as a songwriter, namely that he’s only writing songs about cars and girls. You can listen to it as a song about a doomed romance with a young woman, but it’s certainly not the only way you can hear it.
“Backstreets” is powerful performed live. The versions from 1978, with the extended interlude that would eventually turn into “Drive All Night” on The River, were a cut above.
Well, we’ve made it this far. The next post in this series? It will be naming my all-time, top 5 favorite Springsteen songs.