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:

85. “The Ties that Bind” (from The River)

84. “Working on the Highway” (from Born In The U.S.A.)

83. “Straight Time” (from The Ghost of Tom Joad)

82. “This Life” (from Working On A Dream)

81. “New York City Serenade” (from The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle)

80. “Tunnel of Love”

From Tunnel of Love

LISTEN HERE

“It ought to be easy, ought to be simple enough/Man meets woman and they fall in love.” Ah, if only that were true, Boss man. Then again, if it were, we’d be robbed of so much great music, such as this stirring title cut to Bruce’s stellar 1987 meditation on the perils of romance.

This is one of the most dynamic singles Springsteen has ever delivered, and it certainly benefits from the presence of several band members, who had otherwise been hardly used on the album. The percussive start is almost funky, but then it opens up into the shimmering synthesizers of Roy Bittan. Things flow so smoothly that you can miss the fact that there isn’t much of a melody.

Bruce takes a metaphor that isn’t new but gives it a few twists and turns to make it feel new. What is essentially a song about love starts off in a tawdry way with the obese, leering carny quickly shattering any sentimental notions. As the ride begins, the shadows creep in, all the easier for two people to hide things from one another. The crazy mirrors also show the couple to each other as grotesque versions of themselves, preparing them for the bumpy ride ahead.

In the end, Bruce resigns himself to settling for hollow victories: “You’ve got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above.” But Nils Lofgren’s guitar solo has the decisive say, an anguished howl that practically explodes out of the claustrophobic funhouse. The couple comes out the other side to hear the screams of the rollercoaster, and we’re left wondering if they’re now more queasy than invigorated by the ride they’ve had and the future that lies ahead of them.

79. “Across the Border”

From The Ghost of Tom Joad

LISTEN HERE

Anyone fond of the phrase “hoping against hope” will recognize the sentiments of the narrator in this lovely offering from The Ghost of Tom Joad. An immigrant trying to make it into America, most likely illegally although we’re never told for sure, reassures his wife that their journey will end happily. The series of promises is undercut by the reality of the situation, something that’s relayed to us by the world-weary cadences of the man playing the role of this immigrant, one Bruce Springsteen.

The melody is achingly pretty, and the subtle accompaniment of acoustic guitar is embellished with just the right bits of keyboards and percussion. Solos are taken by Soosie Tyrell on violin and Bruce on harmonica. Tyrell’s bit drips with melancholy, while Bruce plays with more force as if he’s trying to blow this pair to safety and happiness.

The couple’s Eden is a place of simple pleasures: Tranquil skies, a small house on a hill, a place where “pain and memory have been stilled.” But the lines that say it all about this man’s outlook come toward the end: “For what are we/Without hope in our hearts/That someday we’ll drink from God’s blessed waters.” It’s as if he’s saying that it would be sinful to lose faith, and even mentioning the obstacles he faces would give them a credence they don’t deserve. It’s a touching ending, and it’s a credit to Bruce’s characterization of this narrator that we’re left hoping, against hope as it may be, that he finds his paradise, one way or the other.

78. “Growin’ Up”

From Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.

LISTEN HERE

The mix is kind of lousy. The only thing that really stands out is the tinkling piano of David Sancious; everything else just kind of melds into a vaguely chugging rhythm. And the melody see-saws up and down but never really coheres into a tune.

But none of that matters once Bruce spits out his staggeringly brilliant first lines: “I stood stone-like at midnight suspended in my masquerade/I combed my hair till it was just right and commanded the night brigade.” They say that all songs should have a killer opening to grab the attention; Bruce does his job almost too well, because you can get lost analyzing those first two lines.

If you do, you’ll miss a ton of poetic gems sprinkled liberally through the quick-talking tale, like “I hid in the clouded wrath of the cloud.” Or how about this gem of a couplet: “I took month-long vacations in the stratosphere where you know it’s really hard to hold your breath/I swear I lost everything I ever loved or feared, I was the cosmic kid in full costume dress.” Notice how the clever wordplay never comes at the expense of the emotional content and the themes Bruce is trying to get across.

His main theme is how loneliness is sometimes a necessary copilot on the flight out of adolescence. For all of the bravado on display here, Springsteen makes it clear that it’s a great risk to buck the popular wisdom of the crowd, and doing so isolates you. But, in his case, it got him to the point where he could recount his tale for millions. “Growin’ Up” says what a lot of us would like to say about our own formative experiences, but none of us have the skill to say it as well as Bruce.

77. “I’m On Fire”

From Born In The U.S.A.

LISTEN HERE

Born In The U.S.A. was on such a roll that when this song was released it shot into the Top 10 despite some pretty intense themes that weren’t exactly the usual teeny-bopper fare. Or maybe listeners were distracted by the Johnny Cash boom-chicka beat that Bruce conjured with Max Weinberg. The mournful synthesizer whine played by Roy Bittan was far more to the point of what this track was about.

Springsteen plays the other man in a love triangle here, trying to persuade a woman to cuckold her husband and doing so without a trace of remorse. His desires completely overwhelm any such reservations, as he expresses, quite violently, in the final verse. At the end of the song, he’s left “woo-hooing” into the night, a release of all of this sexual frustration as the music chugs on.

MTV made a big deal at the time about it being the first video in which Bruce “acts,” although as an actor, Bruce made a pretty good rock star. It was just another distraction which allowed Springsteen’s subversively pitch-black ode to carnal longing palatable to the masses.

76. “Tougher Than the Rest”

From Tunnel of Love

LISTEN HERE

Bruce comes on like a gunslinger on this Tunnel Of Love track, only the outlaws he’s picking off are the would-be suitors of the object of his affection. Aided by some pretty imposing traveling music, you get the feeling that Springsteen wins the heart of the girl at the end of this movie.

Max Weinberg’s drum beat smacks you in the teeth and right off the bat you can tell that this ride won’t be for the faint of heart. The low synthesizer notes that rumble as a kind of opening riff set the moodily imposing tone. The background is kept pretty spare from there on out, just the percussion and some distant organ from Danny Federici adding color. Bruce adds a wheezing harp solo at the end to add the exclamation point.

If we’re going to stick with this gunfighter metaphor, then it’s clear that Bruce is no Young Gun here. Consider him more of a grizzled, man-of-few-words, seen-his-share-of-battles type, like Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven or Tommy Lee Jones in Lonesome Dove. He’s been around enough to realize that love is sometimes a process of elimination: “Well ‘round here baby /I’ve learned you get what you can get.”

In the end, what he can offer is the fortitude and resolve to deal with all of the trials and tribulations of romance. I have a feeling that has sounded like a pretty damn good offer to millions of female Springsteen fans since the first time they heard this song.

The complete list to date.

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