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:

65. “The Hitter” (from Devils & Dust)

64. “Radio Nowhere” (from Magic)

63. “One Step Up” (from Tunnel of Love)

62. “Linda Will You Let Me Be The One” (from Tracks)

61. “Happy” (from Tracks)

60. “Cover Me”

From Born In The U.S.A.

LISTEN HERE

For all of Bruce Springsteen’s love for obscure pop chestnuts that had little on their mind other than to get people’s heads bobbing and backsides swaying, he often couldn’t see the value in similar songs that he wrote himself. Hence, he very nearly gave this top 10 smash away to Donna Summer, only to hold onto it at the last minute at the persistent urging of Jon Landau.

Miss Summer’s loss was the gain of every Springsteen fan that has had the pleasure of seeing the E Street Band tear into this song. That stuttering rhythm hits a primal nerve when you hear it. Max Weinberg rolls powerfully all over the bridge, clearing the way just long enough for Bruce’s famously desperate reading of the line, “I can hear the wild world blowing.”

At the end, Bruce is grunting maniacally and ripping at his guitar like a madman might rend his garments. All of that deranged force fits perfectly with the simple yet potent lyrics. A blast of adrenaline unlike most anything else in the band’s catalog, “Cover Me” topped out at #7 in the U.S. charts. It’s amazing that it almost ended up a B-side to “She Works Hard For The Money.” Then again, with a groove that sumptuous, this song would have worked anywhere.

59. “Factory”

From Darkness On the Edge Of Town

LISTEN HERE

Just three years after providing one of the great documents of youth in all its glory and heartbreak on Born To Run, Springsteen wrote a song that precisely nails the very adult drudgery of the working life. It’s as if he’s warning his youthful characters from songs past that their future might not be as bright as the highways they frequent seem to promise.

“Factory” is Springsteen’s most country-sounding song up to that point in his career, thanks to the tear-in-my-beer piano chords of Roy Bittan. Danny Federici provides a little bit of soul in the organ solo, but otherwise this track is firmly rooted in the sound of Nashville, which was a stark change-of-pace from the anthems of the past. Bruce needed a more lived-in sound for the world-weary subject matter, and this track trudges along like the men in the song through the factory gates.

The matter-of-fact lyrics, delivered in a passionless drone by Bruce, depict the daily routine of the working man as if he was the one on the conveyor belt: Get up at dawn, do your job, lose your hearing, eat lunch, quietly seethe in impotent rage, go home and get ready to do it all over again. The only bit of speculation comes at the end: “And you just better believe, boy, somebody’s gonna get hurt tonight.”

So who’s going to get hurt exactly? Maybe the wise guy who gives this weary worker a cross look in the tavern that night? Maybe the wife who doesn’t have dinner waiting on the table? Or maybe the young boy who dared to want something else from his life than, as Bruce would sing on “The River,” “to do like your Daddy done?” And maybe that boy was even fiddling around with a guitar at the time? Bruce’s empathy for what would drive a man to such violence is what makes this song so effective. In turn, his understanding for the life his own father was forced to lead shows a young man willing to forgive even if he could never forget.

58. “Nebraska”

From Nebraska

LISTEN HERE

I once read a criticism of Shakespeare’s work (Will In The World, by Stephen Greenblatt, if you’re ambitious) that implied that his greatest contribution to drama as we now know it today was his discovery that, by removing key elements of the story that might explain characters’ motives, he could hit much closer to home as far as the psychological truth of those characters, henceforth getting them to behave more like actual human beings.

I think Bruce Springsteen was on to something similar when he wrote “Nebraska,” his chilling retelling of the tale of mass murderer Charles Starkweather, who, with his teenage girlfriend in tow, killed 11 people in a 1958 spree. Bruce never tries to give this guy a motive, a brave choice that makes the song an almost unbearably powerful artistic statement.

Notice how even-keeled Springsteen keeps everything. The melody is lilting and gentle, and he sings in measured tones. He even addresses the listeners with an oh-so respectful “sir,” all while casually recounting his crimes. There are no excuses, no remorse. He just meets the girl, they go for a ride, and “ten innocent people died.”
Springsteen as Starkweather finally relents to the questioning of his motives with an icily, matter-of-fact line: “Well sir I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.” Billy Shakes couldn’t have said it better himself.

57. “The Wrestler”

From Working On a Dream

LISTEN HERE

The Boss gets so far inside the head of Mickey Rourke’s character in the title track to the unlikely 2008 hit film that you’d swear he wrote the screenplay. Like the film, the song wouldn’t work if you couldn’t like this guy, warts and all. Rourke got it right on the screen, and Bruce gets it right on record.

Of course, this guy is also a train wreck, someone who constantly makes the wrong choices even as he’s given multiple shots at redemption. But he also has enough sense in him to know the wrong that he’s done, and his inability to forgive himself is heartbreaking. For all his ability to identify his mistakes, he cannot seem to avoid them.

And so, he embraces them with poignantly gentle nobility that belies his coarse exterior: “My only faith is in the broken bones and bruises I display.” Much was made in the press about how Rourke and his character were two sides of the same coin: Could-have-been-contenders given one last shot at the limelight. In “The Wrestler,” Springsteen provides a moving portrait of both the actor and his role.

56. “Sherry Darling”

From The River

LISTEN HERE

So fun it’s almost criminal, “Sherry Darling,” the second song on The River, quickly gave notice that the 1980 album would showcase new sides of Bruce Springsteen to the public, sides that he had shown often in live performance but rarely on record. In the case of this song, that side is the humorous, fun-loving screwball who can leave an audience in stitches with hilarious tales of addled characters.

Bruce is at war with his girlfriend’s mom in “Sherry Darling,” bemoaning the fact that he has to cart her behind all over town. As this hag incessantly nags from the backseat, Bruce has to find a way to balance his love for the title girl while still keeping his sanity.

Dressed up in a quasi-Latin rhythm, the song sounds like a party thanks to some studio revelry that could rival the Beach Boys “Barbara Ann” in raucousness. Danny Federici’s organ squirts bright colors into every corner, and the surf-guitar solo is a perfect addition. The song just sounds like a place you would want to be, even if you have to deal with an unemployed, big-mouthed, even bigger-footed harpy while you’re there.

The complete list to date.

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