Happy Bruce Springsteen week. The Boss released his 18th album, High Hopes, yesterday, and to celebrate, he dropped by Late Night with Jimmy Fallon to sing about Chris Christie and discuss ducks and horses. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get Springsteen to join us for a panel on Rosa vs. Santiago, but we can rank all of his studio albums, minus We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (it barely counts), from worst to best
And yes, we ALL know Hammersmith Odeon London ’75 and Tracks are awesome, but they still don’t count.
17. Human Touch (1992)
Unless you’re the Velvet Underground or Outkast, even the greats release sh*t albums from time to time. Human Touch is Bruce Springsteen’s sh*t album. Released the same day as Lucky Town, Human Touch is both cursed with a well-meaning, yet creepy album title and an overload of thickly dated production and imposter lyrics. Springsteen recorded the album with an unfamiliar team of session musicians — that explains why it sounds so aimless.
16. The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995)
The second, and weakest, of Springsteen’s three acoustic folk albums, The Ghost of Tom Joad is an attempt to duplicate the stark minimalism of Nebraska, and a failure. The simple act of a man plucking an acoustic guitar in a dark room doesn’t make for “brave” music, which is what Rolling Stone called The Ghost of Tom Joad; more often than not, it makes it boring, especially when the songs are as repetitive as “Balboa Park” and “Dry Lightning.” It’s hard to tell when one ends and another begins. One major highlight: “Youngstown,” which benefits from a striking full-band performance.
15. Devils & Dust (2005)
And the third acoustic album…What slightly separates Devils & Dust from Joad is more involved arrangements, yes, but also, Springsteen’s voice begins to match the subject material. It’s huskier, deeper, more worn down by time, which befit the tortured themes. The title track picks up steam as it goes, so that by the time Springsteen begins howling on the harmonica, it feels like you’re being led on a journey from a man who’s seen it all, not someone who’s only read a Steinbeck novel. There’s also a song about having sex with a prostitute. That’s cool.
14. Lucky Town (1992)
Lucky Town. Let that sink in: Lucky Town. Why is it that when rock stars begin to age, their album titles get worse? I’m looking at you, Empire Burlesque-era Bob Dylan. Anyway, the stripped-down Lucky Town wasn’t a companion piece to Human Touch in release-date only: they’re both soulless and hollow, lacking the oomph of a “Backstreets,” let alone a “Spirit In the Night.” There’s a few decent songs here, including “Better Days” and “If I Should Fall Behind,” but not enough to make for a must-own album.
13. High Hopes (2014)
High Hopes is a collection of good songs — some covers (Suicide!), some standards, some new arrangements of old classics (“American Skin (41 Shots)”) — that make for a mediocre album. There’s little thematic unity tying High Hopes together; it sounds like the work of a guy who’s been in the business for decades, and felt like covering the Saints, because he’s Bruce Motherf*cking Springsteen. Carry on as you were, sir.
12-10. Magic (2007)/Working on a Dream (2009)/Wrecking Ball (2012)
I’m not convinced these aren’t all the same album. All three are fairly good, were described as “the best album since…” by seemingly every reviewer when they came out, and sound enough like impassioned throwbacks to better Bruce days gone by that it’s easy to buy into the excitement of the moment. BRUCE IS BACK, BABY. Six months later, once you’ve moved on (JOHN MELLENCAMP IS BACK, BABY), the allure is gone, and you realize Magic, Working on a Dream, and Wrecking Ball are fine additions to a stacked discography, but hardly essential.
9. The Rising (2002)
Or, 9/11: The Album. It’s impossible to separate The Rising from the events of September 11th, which isn’t such a bad thing. I mean, 9/11 was bad (*loosens collar*), but it’s interesting to juxtapose The Rising versus songs like “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning).” Both are ostensibly about the same subject, but Springsteen isn’t as outwardly patriotic rah-rah; he knows it’s not that easy. There’s pain and sorrow before joy, but it’ll come, eventually. “May your hope give us hope.” The Rising was the first album the Boss recorded with the E Street Band in 18 years, and all parties sound invigorated. It’s not without its fair share of faults, though, including a bloated running time and occasionally impersonal lyric that tries to speak for everyone, but ends up representing no one. Coming from one of the greatest character lyricists of all-time (Kitty, Sandy, etc.), this is a big change, and not necessarily a welcome one.
8. Tunnel of Love (1987)
Tunnel of Love is a 1970s album trapped in a 1980s body. The production is awful — polished, puny, and WAY too much synth — but stripped to their core, the songs here are honest and personal, and easy to relate to even if you didn’t want to. Tunnel of Love is Springsteen’s autobiographical divorce album. Had it come out ten years earlier, it might have been his Blood on the Tracks. Instead, it’s a classic “oh, what could’ve been” album.
7. Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973)
Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. is a huge album. It would have been tough for a 10-year veteran to keep track of the moving parts, let alone a 24-year-old newbie. It’s to Springsteen’s massive credit that it’s as exuberantly good as it is, including future standards “Growin’ Up” and “Spirit in the Night.” Thing is, because he was so fresh, some of the songs sound a little thin; when there’s a lot going, as there is in “Blinded by the Light,” everything has to be precise, and Springsteen still sounds unsure whether he’s a folk artist, rock star, or some combination of folk-rock-jazz-pop. Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. is very good, but it wouldn’t become great until Springsteen decided who he was.
6. Born in the U.S.A. (1984)
There are twelve songs on Born in the U.S.A. Seven were released as singles. That’s almost unheard of, and the reason why you might hate Born in the U.S.A., the album and ESPECIALLY the title track. You can’t go five minutes without hearing it on FM radio — it’s become such a mundane part of life, unfortunately slotted between the Steve Miller Band and Poison, that it’s hard to remember how damn good the song is. It’s epic in a different way than Born to Run. It’s flashy CGI, not live action, and a successful attempt at hiding challenging messages in mainstream rock. “Darlington County” and “Glory Days” are honky-tonk standards that hide their sadness in oversized drums and yelps, while “I’m on Fire” is as haunting as anything on Nebraska. If only all artists could “sell out” as well as Bruce did.
5. The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle (1973)
The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle was released the same year as Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., but it sounds like it came from an entirely different group; it’s so much more self-assured. The band sounds tighter, Springsteen seamlessly transitions from meditative to gleeful, and the songs tells precise stories that find meaning in the smallest of details. Take the impossibly-good three-song side two, from “Incident on 57th Street” (one of Springsteen’s greatest songs), to “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” to “New York City Serenade.” They’re 90-minute movies condensed into eight-minute songs. It’s Carefree Jersey Bruce at his finest.
4. Nebraska (1982)
Nebraska is like Dancer In the Dark, that Lars von Trier movie you’ve had in your Netflix Queue for years: it’s too bleak to enjoy. You can admire the genius behind its creation, and even find that it lingers longer than most pop culture artifacts, but man oh man, Nebraska is tough to get through. The catchiest song begins with, “Well, they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night…” It’s a masterpiece, but only in certain situations. Fun run in the park: nope. Midnight drive in the middle of nowhere with a pack of cigarettes in one hand and bottle of booze in the other: yup.
3. The River (1980)
The River is a mess. It transitions from wild to innocent without warning. The tracklist was seemingly thrown together without care. Plus, like most double albums, there’s plenty of filler. That being said, The River is a masterpiece, the only album of Springsteen’s that could MAYBE take down the obvious top twos below. It was recorded live, with few overdubs, which explains the number of straight-up rockers. “The Ties That Bind,” “Jackson Cage,” “Two Hearts,” and “The Price You Pay” are as exuberant as anything in Springsteen’s discography, and even duds like “I Wanna Marry You” are fun throwaways. The solemn songs are not without their merits, too, though midway through “Drive All Night,” I usually rewind back to “Crush on You” for the thousandth time. That sax solo!
2. Born to Run (1975)
1. Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)
Earlier, I compared Nebraska to Dancer In the Dark. Well, to continue the movie/music theme, Darkness on the Edge of Town is the Empire Strikes Back to Born to Run‘s A New Hope. Both masterpieces, mind you, but like Empire, Darkness is darker, more raw than its predecessor. It covers triumph-with-a-cost and brutality, sometimes in the same song (“Badlands”), with more depth than Born to Run, and now it sounds like I think Born to Run stinks. That’s not true at all: Born to Run is the brilliant work of a poet who still thinks there’s hope; Darkness on the Edge of Town comes from that same poet five years later, when he knows there isn’t. I’ll always take the despair.
