 No Retreat, No Surrender: The Ultimate Springsteen Countdown (Songs 15-11)By
JBev
Marriage and children have always been a big part of the American Dream, but Bruce Springsteen subverts that with the title track to his 1980 double album. In “The River,” the interlinked momentous occasions of having child and getting married are boiled down to one terse line that doesn’t even pretend to be romantic: “Then I got married, and man that was all she wrote.”  No Retreat, No Surrender: The Ultimate Springsteen Countdown (Songs 20-16)By
JBev
“The screen door slams/Mary’s dress sways.” It doesn’t get much more iconic than that, does it? Actually you can close your eyes, put your finger down on the lyric sheet of “Thunder Road,” and you’d probably land on a line that has resonated through rock and roll history.  No Retreat, No Surrender: The Ultimate Springsteen Countdown (Songs 25-21)By
JBev
Imagine a song with music by The Left Banke and lyrics by Warren Zevon and you’ll get an idea of the sensibility behind this brilliant Magic track. Has there ever been a production quite so lush that’s been employed in the service of such a psychologically dark song?  No Retreat, No Surrender: The Ultimate Springsteen Countdown (Songs 30-26)By
JBev
It’s all about momentum, I suppose. In the mid-80’s, Bruce Springsteen could have coughed up a hairball and it likely would have shot up the charts with no sweat. But when this sure shot of a single was released to introduce the world to Darkness On the Edge of Town in 1978, it sputtered to a lackluster #33. No Retreat, No Surrender: The Ultimate Springsteen Countdown (Songs 35-31)By
JBev
In an unabashed throwback to his own glory days, Bruce went all-out on this firecracker track which kicked off Side 2 of Born In The U.S.A. He was actually ambivalent about including it on the album for its fearlessly big-hearted attitude, but, ever the silent contributor, Steve Van Zandt insisted that it belonged.  No Retreat, No Surrender: The Ultimate Springsteen Countdown (#200-196)By
JBev
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.  Fifty Years on the Island: An Overview of Island RecordsBy
Douglas Newman
Island Records is celebrating its 50th anniversary and a quick look at its history reveals that it has a lot to celebrate. Not only has it given us some of rock music’s best selling records, but it’s also nurtured some of the planet’s most well respected musicians in a variety of genres.  Counting Down a Decade’s Worth of Rolling Stones Songs (#5-1)By
JBev
We counted down the complete Beatles’ catalog, and now we take on their rivals for title of best rock band ever – The Rolling Stones. This time we’re going to break down the band’s 40+ year career in easily digestible chunks. We’ll start with the seventies, arguably the Stones most fertile, or at least varied, decade. |
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