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:

140. “What Love Can Do” (from Working On a Dream)

139. “Kitty’s Back” (from The Wild, The Innocent, & The E Street Shuffle)

138. “Youngstown” (from The Ghost of Tom Joad)

137. “My Beautiful Reward” (from Lucky Town)

136. “Leah” (from Devils & Dust)

135. “Better Days”

From Lucky Town

LISTEN HERE

After years of turmoil, Bruce was beginning to feel pretty good about himself in the early 90’s. Maybe some of his fans weren’t ready to celebrate though, because they greeted his double-release of Human Touch and Lucky Town with a shrug compared to the rapturous reception for most of his other work. “Better Days” is the poster child for this happier Springsteen, and, as such, sometimes gets a bad rap.

If there is a flaw with the song, it’s that it seems calculated to be the kind of big anthem that Bruce tossed off with little effort throughout the 70’s and 80’s. Some of that strain is audible, but a radiant chorus goes a long way to hiding it. Extra credit should go to the backing vocals of Lisa Lowell, Patti Scialfa, and Soozie Tyrell, because they really send the refrain skyward.

It’s also easy to miss some of the self-reproach inherent in the lyrics if you focus on the uplift. “It’s a sad funny ending to find yourself pretending/A rich man in a poor man’s shirt,” Bruce sings, a line that speaks volumes about his ambivalence toward the fame and fortune his superstar status has accorded him.

So maybe “Better Days” never became the anthem it was intended to be. Maybe it never stood a chance. At the very least Bruce earned the right to sing about the good stuff for a change, no matter what his audience might have wanted.

134. “You’ll Be Coming Down”

From Magic

LISTEN HERE

Bruce could just as easily be speaking to a young pop star as he is to a former love. That’s how malleable the lyrics are in “You’ll Be Comin’ Down,” a catchy bit of mid-tempo balladry off Magic. The message is the same: Be careful when things are given to you easily, because just as easily they can be taken away.

I’m not sure that the mix does this song a lot of credit. It’s all a bit jumbled once you get into the heart of the song, and that’s too bad because there are certain elements which deserve a clear listen, such as the bell-like acoustic guitars at the start and the rumble-and-snap interplay between Garry Tallent and Max Weinberg. At times, even Bruce’s even-tempered vocals seem to get buried.

If Bruce’s message is a bit trite, the methods he employs to convey it carry the song out of the hum-drum. Color seems to be the main motif here, as just about everything in the crayon box short of Burnt Sienna can be found in Bruce’s descriptions. He also does a nice job of interweaving the mundane details of a dreary life with fantastical elements that portend bad tidings. “You’ll Be Comin’ Down” is yet another example of Bruce taking what could have been a mediocre track and imbuing it with enough forceful personality and dazzling talent to push it across.

133. “Working On a Dream”

From Working On a Dream

LISTEN HERE

Springsteen’s affection for Roy Orbison is well-documented and easily detected by listening to certain songs. The title track and lead single off his 2009 album, Working On a Dream, rises and falls acrobatically like some of Orbison’s best, and you can only wonder what that supernatural voice would have done wrapped around this excellent offering. Still, the soaring harmonies of Bruce and Little Steven aren’t that bad of a substitute.

As all singles should, the song goes down smooth and grabs you at first listen, even if it isn’t the meatiest offering in the man’s catalog. Crisp and clean, there isn’t an ounce of flab on the song, and the whistling solo is something new.

A lot of folks tried to tie the song to the ’08 election, and Bruce’s vocal support of President Obama did nothing to dissuade this reading. While the tenor of the song might have fit in with the prevalent mood, in the literal sense it’s more a song of longing than anything else. The narrator is toiling away at some sort of back-breaking manual labor while dreaming of his love that’s far away. Though ultimately hopeful, there are elements of sadness and desperation in those harmonies that can’t be denied. Those elements linger with you even after the feel-good power of the music dies away.

132. “Dead Man Walkin’”

From The Essential Bruce Springsteen

LISTEN HERE

I saw it a long time ago, but I recall being pretty impressed by the film Dead Man Walking. Considering it was coming from Tim Robbins, I was expecting a pretty heavy-handed diatribe against the death penalty, but instead the film simply told a story and let everyone else do the judging if they wished. When (spoiler alert!) Sean Penn admits his guilt to Susan Sarandon right before his execution, it’s a pretty powerful moment.

No, I’m not auditioning for Roger Ebert’s job, just simply making a point that Springsteen’s theme song for the film is treated in a similarly restrained, yet still potent fashion. I’m always a little leery of movie themes that try to work the title of the film into the song, and I have to say I’ve never been able to fully put that aside with this song. Bruce repeating the title seems a bit forced to me, and it also deprives the song of some of its meaning out of context.

But I will say he keeps the rest of the lyrics vague enough to evoke emotion for people other than death-row inmates. The line, “Between our dreams and actions lies this world,” is a pretty concise summation of the way that the circumstances of life can derail the best intentions. The spare acoustic rendering certainly brings chills. So, while it might not quite be up to the level of some of his other soundtrack work (which does set the bar pretty high), “Dead Man Walkin’” gets this reviewer’s thumbs-up.

131. “My Best Was Never Good Enough”

From The Ghost of Tom Joad

LISTEN HERE

An oddly sarcastic and funny postage stamp stuck on the somber envelope of The Ghost of Tom Joad, this song finds Bruce taking umbrage with all vapid bromides designed to make us feel good about our miserable existences. I’m particularly grateful that he took aim at Forrest Gump, because I’m still bitter about that piece of tripe winning best picture over Pulp Fiction. Outrage, I say. (I know. You’re thinking, “Again with the movies.”)

This is the kind of tossed-off, humorous trifle that Dylan might have thrown on one of his early albums with a throwaway title like “Cliché Blues #27” or something like that. Bruce deepens it a bit by adding the romantic angle. The reason he’s hearing all of these one-liners is because he couldn’t hold on to his girl, which probably makes the sappiness of those sayings even more infuriating.

Or maybe this is Bruce’s way of saying that the social ills he had categorized in the album’s previous songs were all too easily dismissed by such tired slogans. Whatever the case, “My Best Was Never Good Enough” is a strikingly odd way to end things, and yet somehow ironically apropos.

The complete list to date.

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