Top five 5 Springsteen songs released since 2000
It's tough for any Springsteen fan below the age of 30 to accept that the best Boss records have already been released and that no new album will come close to having the same impact as Darkness... or Nebraska.
Don't get me wrong, Wrecking Ball is a very good album, but Working On a Dream was leaden and underwritten and The Rising, despite being a welcome return of the E Street Band and marking an important step in Springsteen's career, has a lot of frustratingly broad lyrics and quite a few mediocre, meandering songs (e.g. "Lonesome Day", "Countin' on a Miracle" "Let's Be Friends").
Of course, there are a few songs released since Springsteen got the E Street Band back together in 1999 that stand up perfectly well among the classics. Below I've listed the ones I think are possibly among the best songs Bruce has ever written.
The first time I heard this song was on the Live in New York City HBO special that was aired in small excerpts on German TV sometime in 2000.
I quickly learned (we had recently gotten our first internet connection) that this was a brand new song, not to be found on any of his previous albums, which made the VHS I had taped the TV special on all the more precious.
Since then I had been waiting to hear this song live and was excited to see it on the tracklist for Wrecking Ball last year and then to hear it at the San Siro and Wembley this month. It is a classic, sombre yet spirited, mid-tempo rouser with lyrics that land squarely on the right side of the divide between the bland and the universal.
My father chose a few lines from this song to write on a card to my mother at a time that I later learned was one of the most difficult moments of her life:
and I'll stand by your side
You'll need a good companion
For this part of the ride
Leave behind your sorrows
For tomorrow there'll be sunshine
And all this darkness past"
Although Bruce finally released a studio version of LOHAD on Wrecking Ball it's the live version from NYC that I tend to play - I much prefer Max' dry, four-to-the-floor beat to the drum machine at the beginning of the album version and the hectic syncopations that follow. The call-and-response nature of the outro is made for a live setting, and the forever delayed ending leaves room for a mini-solo for Max and a snippet of "People Get Ready".
The only The Rising songs that (to my knowledge) have been getting played live over the last 4 years or so are the title track, "Waiting On a Sunny Day", "Lonesome Day" and the admittedly great "My City of Ruins".
At shows, I haven't seen many signs requesting songs off of post-The Rising albums, but personally I would love for this one (originally written in 1994, i.e. before the E Street Band reunion, which might explain the spartan arrangement) to get an airing.
In keeping with that album's general mood, it's a downbeat song, but where elsewhere the electric guitars fizz aggressively and Max' drums are looped to imitate a hip hop beat, the arrangement is a lot more sparse.
Synths reminiscent of more romantic songs like "Secret Garden" are subtly played over bare-bones acoustic guitar strumming, and the chorus is simple yet arresting and memorable. The lyrics ostensibly deal with loss and guilt, perhaps after a traumatic event of some sort, but I prefer to read it as a confession by someone who has lost their way badly and wants the new person in their life to know that they don't know where to turn - a warning of some sorts.
Like Bruce's best songs, this one works incredibly well in a stripped-back version, as displayed on the Devils & Dust tour in 2005/06.
Devils & Dust is to Springsteen solo albums what Match Point is to latter-day Woody Allen films - not bad, generally enjoyable, containing traces of it's maker's incredible talent, but just short of being a stone-cold classic.
Out of the three solo 'folk' records Springsteen made (the other two being Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad) this occupies the middle spot and contains one of the loveliest Springsteen songs in his back catalogue.
It starts off with an acoustic guitar reprising Steve Van Zandth's mandolin riff in "Land of Hope...", and over the course of the three and a half minutes of the song synths, a horn section and backing vocals are added to round off the arrangement.Â
As an atheist, I tend to read songs that seem to invoke god as being about companionship and perseverance in general (see "Land of Hope..." again) rather than religion. God plays a huge role in Springsteen's philosophy and songwriting, and the biblical references in his music are legion (just google "Springsteen lyrics faith/sin/redemption"), but to me "Leah" is a love song in as much as "If I Should Fall Behind" is.
Leah is another name from the bible - it apparently stems from the Hebrew word for 'weary' - and I have no doubt that Bruce chose that name for a reason, but the way he sings it mainly makes me think of a guy who, after a few hardships in past relationships and with his current partner, has gotten his shit together and is excited about building something more lasting, even though this means that he'll have to start bearing some responsibility. Just a great little song.
Lazy 'journalism' alert: If The Rising (morose, introspective, conciliatory) was Bruce's 9/11 record, Magic (gutsy, angry, remonstrating) was his anti-Iraq/Afghanistan war record.
My second favourite song off of Magic is "Gypsy Biker", with which "Long Walk Home" actually shares a lot of similarities - the acoustic strumming pattern, the subject matter (more of which later) and, some might say, the vocal melody.
Lyrically, "Long Walk Home" is a fine example of good latter-day Springsteen lyrics. While he'll probably never write with the associative abandon of his first couple of albums again, he is still capable of evoking clear and affecting images, such as the one of a beloved and familiar place changed beyond recognition.
The song's protagonist is returning home (see the aforementioned "Gypsy Biker", which is about the return of a soldier - dead or alive or possibly neither - after fighting abroad) and feels utterly out of place, a feeling everyone who has left home and returned can emphasise with.
But unlike in the bleak tale of "Gypsy Biker", Springsteen here offers some hope to the listener in the form of a lyrical nod to his classic "My Hometown":
Son, we're lucky in this town
It's a beautiful place to be born.
It just wraps its arms around you,
Nobody crowds you and nobody goes it alone"
Brief note re: the arrangement: Clarence "Big Man" Clemons' sax arguably played a smaller role after the E Street Band reunion, so it's nice to hear a short solo from him here among the biting lead guitars that are a trademark of Brendan O'Brien's productions on all Springsteen albums since and including The Rising (with the exception of Wrecking Ball).
Elsewhere, Roy Bittan's piano stabs manage to force their way through the guitar layers, and the chorus is classic Springsteen in its hopefulness and phrasing.
"Your flag flying over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone.
Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't"
used to sound fairly cringe-worthy and clumsily patriotic to me but I now interpret them as meaning that no matter how much you move around, how much you try to distance yourself from the place you are connected to through circumstance and family, that place is part of who you are and how you look at the world.
(NB: I might have to do another post at some point about how god-fucking-awful Springsteen's music videos are)
The Wrecking Ball tour last year was as much a tour to promote the new album as a way of dealing with the passing of Clarence Clemons a year earlier. And it was dealt with in a tremendously cathartic, beautiful way - I don't want to get too soppy here, but the tributes to the Big Man and organist Danny Federici (who had died of cancer in 2008) were perfectly judged and incorporated into songs like "My City of Ruins", "Spirit in the Night" and "We Are Alive".
The latter is among the songs on Wrecking Ball most audibly influenced by Springsteen's 2006 foray into Irish folk music on the Seeger Sessions, and the best song on the album.
Jiggling along in a weird mix of 6/4 and 4/4 time, it perfectly captures where Springsteen, his band, and, not to put too fine a point on it, a lot of his fans are right now - at a stage where friends passing away is no longer a freak accident but increasingly a part of life.
It celebrates the memory of those who have left us - he specifically mentions striking railroad workers and Martin Luther King - in a brilliantly dark and almost humorous way:
"I awoke last night in a dark and dreamy deep
From my head to my feet, my body gone stone cold
There were worms crawling all around me
Fingers scratching at an earth black and six foot low"
The lyrics are full of evocative curveballs and references, and the horn riff is a lovely rip-off of "Ring of Fire" in the same way that "Badlands" ripped off "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" and "Racing in the Street" nicked its opening riff from The Crystals' "Then He Kissed Me".
I hope that Springsteen's songwriting will go into the direction hinted at in this song - his ear for hooks is still intact, and the less literal his lyrics are the better they tend to be these days.
Live, "We Are Alive" is a perfect foil for the 'new-look' E Street Band, offering the backing singers and horn section (there was no way you could replace Clarence with just one person) more of a starring role and switching things up from the increasingly guitar-led arena rock that comprises the bulk of the setlists.
I don't know how much longer Springsteen and his band can keep on doing what they're doing, but as long as we have songs like this I think we'll be alright.
"Let your mind rest easy, sleep well my friend
It's only our bodies that betray us in the end"
Obligatory plug: you can still buy Jungleland - A Springzine online HERE.
