Rating Bruce

Note: Last revised: 2007 or so

Rating the Records

There is no such thing as a bad Springsteen album. Here is the order I would get them in, and is definitely biased by my 25 30+! years of absorption with The Boss (with year of release and key songs):

1. Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978), the whole fucking record!!!
2. Born to Run (1975), the whole fucking record!!!
3. The River (1980), almost the whole fucking record
4. Greetings from Asbury Park (1973), For You, Growin’ Up
5. Tunnel of Love (1989), Tunnel of Love, All That Heaven Will Allow*
6. The Rising (2002), much, much to love
7. Born in the USA (1984), Cover Me**, No Retreat, No Surrender
8. Live in New York (2001), American Skin, Land of Hope and Dreams, just blasting!
9. Tracks (1998), Where the Bands Are and a dozen others
10. Live, 1975 -1985 (1987?), a whole bunch of the others, done live
11. Magic (2007), Livin’ in the Future, Girls in Their Summer Clothes, Magic, Your Own Worst Enemy
12. Nebraska (1982), Atlantic City, State Trooper, Johnny 99
13. The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle (1973), Rosalita
14. Human Touch/Lucky Town (1992)
15. We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006) and Live in Dublin with the Seeger Sessions Band
16. Devils & Dust (2005)
17. Ghost of Tom Joad (1994 or 95), Sinaloa Cowboys
18. Greatest Hits (1995), a real disappointment—the songs are great but how can you have only one CD?

* Just about the prettiest love song ever written.
** My favorite Springsteen song, period.

More Springsteen Material

• Official Springsteen website
• My weblog entries for My City in Ruins (which I now have on DVD!), falling in love with the Boss, Bruce’s Hobbit name and Spin Magazine’s insult
• Candy’s Room, which links here from it’s news page
• Cornel Bonca’s excellent essay published in July, 2001, in the wake of the HBO concert, in which he describes Springsteen’s oeuvre as “dramatic enactments pitting a Dionysian spirit desperate for release against an equal and opposite force desperate for moral containment.”
• Musicians United for Songs In the Classroom hashad several good student essays on Our Man:
  • 8th grade student’s essay about Factory
  • 10th grade students’ essays about The River