Massive Music List

For more than 35 years, Bruce Springsteen has set a standard of consistent excellence that few other rock and roll artists could ever hope to match. He has written so many great songs, as both a solo artist and with the E Street Band, that it would seem almost impossible to try and rank those classics one against another. And yet one fan was daring enough, or maybe foolhardy enough, to try. Following up our Beatles and Stones countdowns, JamsBio presents “No Retreat, No Surrender,” a worst-to-first countdown of every album cut in Springsteen history, plus a few choice outtakes, live classics, and soundtrack songs – that’s 200 tunes ranked and defended. Check out JamsBio.com each day as the countdown is gradually revealed, and prepare to hit the message boards to defend your favorites.

The complete list to date.

The Last Five:

195. “Gloria’s Eyes” (from Human Touch)

194. “All the Way Home” (from Devils & Dust)

193. “Long Time Comin’” (from Devils & Dust)

192. “Silver Palomino” (from Devils & Dust)

191. “Dry Lightning” (from The Ghost of Tom Joad)

190. “Souls of the Departed”

From Lucky Town

LISTEN HERE

I once read a quote somewhere attributed to Randy Newman concerning his song “Sail Away,” which is essentially an ironic recruiting pitch by a slave trader. I don’t remember exactly the quote, but the gist of it was that Newman said he couldn’t very well attack the topic by simply stating slavery was bad. He had to find a way to present the situation in a different way that might actually reveal something about the situation people didn’t already know.

I mention this because in “Souls Of The Departed,” found on 1992’s Lucky Town, it feels like Bruce Springsteen is telling what we already know: war and violence are bad. Inspired by the dual early-90’s downers of the first Gulf War and the LA riots, the song tries to personalize the situation by depicting the stories of individuals caught in the big picture. But it all comes off as a little too obvious.

Bruce has written far more subtle indictments of the toll taken by war on human lives, and by mashing up the war part with the story of a little boy caught in the middle of a gang war, it just seems like he’s loading the deck. Nobody is arguing that these situations are tragedies that speak poorly on the human race as a whole, but we don’t learn anything new from the song.

The outrage is admirable and necessary in a society in which too many people, like the men living comfortably in Bruce’s narrative, look the other way when confronted with these realities. But by hammering this home with blunt tools, the impact of “Souls Of The Departed” is minimal.

189. “Human Touch”

From Human Touch

LISTEN HERE

Expectations were high when Bruce returned from a 5-year recording hiatus in 1992. In the middle of an era dominated by grunge and gangster rap, surely Bruce would clear the air with a state-of-the-world missive that would set everything straight again.

Maybe those expectations still linger when I listen to “Human Touch,” the song with which he made that return. I don’t think so, though. I think the song would have come up short no matter when it was released.

At 6 ½ minutes long, when it probably could have been a punchy 3, it just never achieves the liftoff to which it’s aspiring. There are individual lines that hit home here and there, and Bruce’s harmonizing with his wife Patti on lines that were clearly inspired by their romance is still lovely to hear. Still, “Human Touch” seems like a letdown.

The clanking percussion effects were always troublesome, giving the song a harsh feel at odds with the lyrics. And the long instrumental finish wants to achieve some kind of catharsis but gets tedious fast.

Bruce wrote in the liner notes to his Greatest Hits collection that this song was about “searching for the bottom line.” If the bottom line is a revelation as standard as the only-love-matters theme of “Human Touch,” a theme in which I believe, but one that isn’t exactly fresh, then you wonder where Bruce was searching all those years.

188. “Roll of the Dice”

From Human Touch

LISTEN HERE

Geez, how could you ever tell Roy Bittan had a hand in writing this song? Could it be the fast and furious piano chords that come blazing at you from the get-go? It’s actually quite reminiscent of some of the session work that The Professor did with Bob Seger around that time, as well as having more than a passing resemblance to countless E Street classics.

Of course, “Roll of The Dice” is found on Human Touch, and sounds more like classic Bruce than any other song on the record. It’s almost like Bruce reluctantly gave in to those who never wanted to see him venture from the plink-happy sounds of his mid-to-late 70’s triumphs.

But this song comes darn close to self-parody with the heavy-handed piano and Bruce’s screeched vocals, which are seconded by R&B singer Bobby King playing the Little Steven role to marginal effect. The standard love-is-a-gamble lyrics veer into cliché way too often (or at least a too-close-for-comfort association with The Stones’ “Tumbling Dice”).

While the bright colors were a nice change of pace from the murky sound prevalent on “Human Touch,” the song tries to force its momentum on the listener. The echoes of past standouts that “Roll of The Dice” conjures may have been intentional, but they are all too faint.

187. “Something in the Night”

From Darkness on the Edge of Town

LISTEN HERE

One of the few missteps on the nearly impeccable Darkness On The Edge Of Town, “Something In The Night” finds Bruce’s mistrust of the forces around him edging closer and closer to paranoia. Whatever’s chasing Bruce in the song sure sounds ominous, but you get the feeling it all might be in his head.

The exaggerated drawling vocals and staggering pace are a tough sell. The intent is to create a heightened intensity through these tactics, but they’re a little too transparent. In addition, the crawling tempo only throws sharper focus on the lyrics, which are too abstract about the singer’s malaise and lack the sharp details that distinguish the best of Springsteen’s writing during this period.

I will say that Max Weinberg is up to the task of the slower pace and more touch-oriented drumming style asked of him here, proving that he’s far more than a walloper. The final verse, in which he alone accompanies Bruce with a thump-thump-thap heartbeat that threatens to stop at any time, is the highlight of the song.

The moment is brief, however, and it’s not enough for me to glowingly recommend the entirety of “Something In The Night”.

186. “Mary Queen of Arkansas”

From Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.

LISTEN HERE

The suits at Columbia famously tried to cast Bruce Springsteen in the role of “The New Dylan,” a role he was ill-suited and reluctant to play. Had he chosen to go down that dead-end path, we might have ended up with many more songs in the vein of this one off his 1973 debut. Or maybe not that many more, because Bruce’s career could never have survived that strain.

It might have been those comparisons that made Bruce feel compelled to include “Mary Queen Of Arkansas” on Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. The hyper-earnestness of the song overwhelms the undeniably impressive wordplay on display. And the overdone strumming is typical of the some of the excesses of the singer-songwriter genre that was blooming at the time.

It’s too bad, because had Bruce just stuck with the nice melody and his interestingly opaque story, he might have been on to something much more affecting. The love affair between the singer and the titular character seems to hinge on issues of power. She seems to have all of it in terms of social standing, but he still has her ear, probably due to their physical relationship. These are mature themes that went far beyond your typical navel-gazing that dominated the genre.

But listening to the song and all its forced drama is a bit exhausting. After a while, following these two characters becomes a chore. Bruce leaves the song in limbo, his narrator hoping that Mary will join him in escape, whether that escape is actual or spiritual. We all know she ended up on the porch of “Thunder Road,” a song that plays with similar themes. The difference: By then, Bruce was no longer “The New Dylan.” He had become the only Bruce Springsteen.

The complete list to date.

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