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:

175. “Night” (from Born to Run)

174. “Crush on You” (from The River)

173. “Reno” (from Devils & Dust)

172. “Tomorrow Never Knows” (from Working on a Dream)

171. “Leap of Faith” (from Lucky Town)

170. “Countin’ On A Miracle”

From The Rising

LISTEN HERE

Although it’s more covert about it then some of its counterparts on The Rising, “Countin’ On A Miracle” is without a doubt 9/11-inspired. Bruce uses the trappings of fairy tales to depict what the narrator’s life once was. The reality is much harsher: “Your kiss was taken from me,” he sings in the bridge. In the final verse he speaks of a need to transcend his earthly limitations: “If I’m gonna live/I’ll lift my life/Darlin’ to you.”

And so the impossibility of a miracle is the only reality that makes any sense to him. Bruce had already hit on the theme that made Joan Didion’s The Year Of Magical Thinking such a trenchant treatise on sudden loss. I just wish he had coupled the lyrics with something a little more original than the grinding rock arrangement he chooses here. The darker aspects of the words deserved a more delicate treatment.

What makes it even more frustrating is that there are hints of what might have been in some of Brendan O’Brien’s production. The acoustic intro is lovely, and I like the string breakdown even more. Those moments are more apt to the song’s message.

As such, the best they can do is to provide some much-needed balance. Springsteen clearly was trying to force some uplift into the proceedings here, but it comes off as, well, forced. The inherent sadness is much more appealing in this case.

169. “Balboa Park”

From The Ghost of Tom Joad

LISTEN HERE

If nothing else, The Ghost of Tom Joad was a fearless depiction of the situation on the southern border of the U.S at a time when it wasn’t exactly a hot-button issue. Springsteen’s insistence on telling these tales through the eyes of the immigrants granted those folks a resilient dignity and forced listeners to identify with the problem more than any amount of statistics concerning the situation ever could. While he wasn’t alone in his crusading (Bruce himself had his eyes opened by some literature on the subject), he was by far the most famous and had the biggest cultural clout.

As such, it’s OK that much of the album eschews the trappings of pop music, since Bruce understood that anything that would distract attention from the bare-bones of his stories would have been detrimental. Songs like “Balboa Park” will never be blasted at full volume through stereo speakers, but their force is not mitigated in any way.

There is a feeling of sameness running through the album though, and this song falls victim to it somewhat. The main frame of the story, i.e. an immigrant who, devoid of other options, takes to illegal means in the U.S. to provide for his family across the border, is told again and again throughout the album.

Although the particulars may be different, there’s not enough in “Balboa Park” to distinguish it as more than a solid effort. Only the final image lingers, a harrowing snap shot of the main character being run down in the street by the American Dream.

168. “Empty Sky”

From The Rising

LISTEN HERE

The acoustic groove that this song works up really conjures the dread and anguish of the lyrics. Those guitars are strummed with tangible force, Max Weinberg’s drums snap like wayward firecrackers, and Roy Bittan’s piano thunders down in the second verse. When Bruce’s harmonica wails in the break, it’s a howl full of helpless sorrow.

The lyrics are more workmanlike (save for a brief trip to Jordan in the final verse) and evoke emptiness with images both inescapably terrible (blood falling from the sky) and subtly devastating (a man pondering the impression of his wife’s body on his empty bed).

What’s even more notable is Springsteen’s owning up to the desire for revenge so closely associated with the 9/11 tragedy that inspired The Rising. By mingling it with the need for love (“I want a kiss from your lips/I want an eye for an eye”), he accurately described the infinitely complicated mix of emotions that roiled inside so many of us at the time.

“Empty Sky” ends up feeling a tad too focused and earnest; you sort of have to avert your eyes from all of that coiled intensity in the song. There is no release from it, but, then again, for those who lost loved ones on that day, release is likely still impossible.

167. “The Angel”

From Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.

LISTEN HERE

Most people associate “The Professor” Roy Bittan’s piano with Springsteen, but David Sancious did the honors for Bruce in the pre-Born To Run days. His elegantly sad piano is the highlight of “The Angel” from Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J..

Those somber chords are a counterintuitive accompaniment for Bruce’s tale of a motorcycle rider who sweeps an unsuspecting beauty “in a trainer bra with eyes like rain” off her feet and rides off into eternity. You can see the seeds for the Springsteen highway obsession that would continue throughout his career; certainly the “interstate’s choked with nomadic hordes” couldn’t be very far removed from the “highway’s jammed with broken heroes.”

The sorrowful piano hints at a darker side to the born-to-ride ethos by which The Angel lives. The imagery might be just a bit too florid here, which may be caused in part by the fact that the debut album was the only one in which Bruce primarily wrote the lyrics before the music. That would also help to explain the lack of a chorus, which leaves the title character wandering around a bit aimlessly by song’s end.

Springsteen’s reluctance to play this song live lends it an unmistakable air of mystery that’s exacerbated by the lack of closure in the lyrics. Somewhere The Angel still rides unrepentantly across the highways in the night, “poison oozing from his engine.” Woe to the Sunday drivers in his path.

166. “Two Faces”

From Tunnel of Love

LISTEN HERE

The dichotomy between the parts of us that want love and the parts that shun it is explored to its very core throughout Tunnel Of Love. Nowhere is this dichotomy spelled out any more clearly than on “Two Faces.”

Bruce dilutes the power of this message by sticking to rather obvious hello/goodbye opposites to get his point across. What profundity the song contains comes from the unchecked admission of his own fallacies in this situation. The willingness to share the blame rather than cast it all on the other person is what makes the album such an incisive portrait of a relationship in crisis.

Musically, there isn’t a whole lot in the offing here, with the exception of Bruce busting out a song-ending organ solo that recalls Del Shannon or ? & The Mysterians. The man’s love of 60’s rock and roll is never far from the forefront of his music.

Combining that appreciation of rock’s history with a lyrical power rarely paralleled in the genre is at the essence of what sets Springsteen apart, and that combination makes even an obscure album cut like “Two Faces” a genuine gem.

The complete list to date.

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