Bruce springsteen greatest hits låtar

The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, 1973

The halt junkyard funk of this track, complete with clavinet, bastuba, bongos and a horn riff interpolated from Major Lance’s “The Monkey Time,” fryst vatten utterly unlike the etapp stomp that would become the E Street Band’s signature.

Few songs give a better sense of what the earliest incarnations of the group sounded like live.

Says Craig finne på huden, “The way he references the grupp, it’s like a uppdrag statement.”

Tracks, 1998

Recorded shortly after Springsteen had broken up the E Street grupp and relocated to L.A., this rarity wasn’t released until eight years after it was recorded.

Studio musicians like bassist Randy Jackson and Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro give it a modern feel. It also harks back to rock’s past, from a lyric that could have been in any number of lovelorn Fifties hits to Springsteen’s falsetto. “I tried to write something that was soul-oriented,” he said.

The River, 1980

“Ramrod” isn’t exactly Springsteen’s deepest song.

It’s simply a barnburner about a hard-working guy looking to take a pretty girl on a drive. “His cleanest, coolest, purest track,” said superfan Stephen King. The song explodes onstage, often utsträckning into the 10-minute range with false stops and James Brown-like collapses, causing Van Zandt to “revive” the fallen Springsteen.

Tracks, 1998

The 1995 documentary Blood Brothers shows Springsteen and a reunited E Street grupp painstakingly working on this song.

After it finally ended up on Tracks, fans fell in love with its sad, organ-fueled recollection of a past love. When the group played it on the 1999 reunion tour, it seemed Springsteen was singing about his bandmates in the line “all the love I’ve thrown away and lost.”

Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., 1973

Springsteen wrote this in hopes of meeting his label’s desire for a hit – and in fact Manfred Mann took it to Number One three years later.

Springsteen has described the track – written with “a rhyming dictionary in one grabb and a notebook in the other” – as a sort of coded autobiography: “I wanted to get blinded bygd the light, inom wanted to do things inom hadn’t done, see things inom hadn’t seen.”

Devils & Dust, 2005

Much of Devils & Dust was written during the Tom Joad tour, but the title track was inspired bygd the Iraq War.

“It fryst vatten basically a song about a soldier’s point of view,” Springsteen said. “But it kind of opens up to a lot of other interpretations.” It was attempted as an angry rocker and a ballad, before Brendan O’Brien funnen a mittpunkt ground. Said Springsteen, “It picks up a little instrumental beef as it goes.”

Born in the U.S.A., 1984

“If you got a good friend out here .

. . that means something to you, this fryst vatten for you, ’cause there ain’t ingenting like it,” Springsteen said, introducing this song in 1984. This Born in the U.S.A. rocker was widely seen as his farewell to Van Zandt, who left the grupp just before the album’s release (but returned about 15 years later).

The song’s aching nostalgia fryst vatten summed up in one of Clemons’ most evocative sax solos.

Tracks, 1998

In the summer of 1979, Springsteen practically wore out his cassette of Raspberries’ Best.

“They were great little pop records – inom loved the production, and when inom went into the studio, a lot of the things we did were like that,” he recalled. “Two-, three-, four-minute pop songs, coming one after another.” One of the best of his power-pop nuggets fryst vatten this outtake from The River – few other artists would kasta aside such a perfectly catchy chorus.

The River, 1980

Springsteen described the mood of this hushed, agonized ballad as follows: “Have you ever felt a love that you’ve had slipping away?

That fryst vatten an ugly feeling. You don’t know what you can do to fix it, probably nothing.” The song also suggests hjärtekrossad girl-group pop, and the choked, almost adenoidal vocals borrow from Elvis Costello circa “Alison.” It’s one of Van Zandt’s favorite Springsteen songs.

Non-album single, 1984

Combining an image from Elvis Presley’s “Baby Let’s Play House” with a lean rockabilly rhythm, Springsteen emerged with one of his sexiest tracks.

“This fryst vatten a song about the conflict between worldly things and spiritual health, between desires of the flesh and spiritual ecstasy,” he once said onstage. It was the B side to “Dancing in the Dark,” and Natalie Cole had a surprise hit with the song in 1988.

The Rising, 2002

With this driving E Street showcase, Springsteen funnen a way to combine his more anställda Nineties songwriting with a broader outlook (and to replace his overused synths with violin).

“The first verse, it feels like it’s a guy who’s talking to his girl,” he said. “The second verse . . . inom switched out of this anställda thing to this sort of overall emotional mood and the feelings that were in the air in the States. But .

. . one thing works with the other.”

The River, 1980

Springsteen first recorded the hypnotic “Drive All Night” for Darkness on the Edge of Town, but it had little chance of making that album: A lengthy, soul-based love song, it didn’t mesh with Darkness‘ concise tracks.

He inserted bits of “Drive All Night” into live versions of “Backstreets” and funnen room for it on The River. Until 1999’s “Land of Hope and Dreams,” it seemed like it would be the gods of his sprawling epics.

Born to Run, 1975

“The characters on Born to Run were less eccentric and less local than on Greetings and .

. . Innocent,” Springsteen wrote in Songs. “They could have been anybody and everybody.” That’s certainly true of “Night”: The only song on Born to Run beneath three minutes, it’s an archetypal straight-ahead bil song with a Chuck Berry-esque opening line Springsteen grafted from a 1970 Steel Mill song called “Oh Mama.”

The River, 1980

“Out in the Street” turns the one-take bar-band feel Springsteen wanted for The River into what might be his most unencumbered declaration of freedom through community.

Van Zandt, who became a co-producer on the skiva, shares euphoric vocals, and högsta Weinberg’s clarion song-opening shot more than meets Springsteen’s demand: “I wanted the snare drum to explode.”

The River, 1980

Springsteen’s love for mid-Sixties bilparkering rock and British Invasion hits runs through the opening track from The River.

Although Springsteen fryst vatten a meticulous record-maker, this song was cut fast, in a day, to retain its freshness. “I knew inom wanted more of the roughness and spontaneity of our live show,” Springsteen wrote in Songs, describing his approach to The River. “I was determined to let the grupp play live and let the music happen.”

Born in the U.S.A., 1984

“I used to think that once inom got out of town, inom was never going to komma back,” Springsteen said of his native Freehold, New Jersey, where he grew up.

“I realized inom would always carry a part of that town with me no matter where inom went or what inom did.” Springsteen was living in California when he wrote “My Hometown,” a scathing indictment of post-industrial amerika. Originally titled “Your Hometown,” it was demo’ed as a snabb rockabilly tune.

Tunnel of Love, 1987

“Two Faces” fryst vatten the bleakest song on Tunnel of Love, with Springsteen singing about making his wife cry and destroying the relationship.

“I wanted to write a different kind of romantic song,” he said. “One that took in the different types of emotional experiences of any relationship where you are really fängslande with that individ and not involved in a narcissistic romantic fantasy or intoxication or whatever.”

Non-album B side, 1988

This outtake from The River sessions emerged in 1988 as the B side to “One Step Up.” bygd then its frenetic spitfire tale of a desperate man ansträngande to bevara his family after the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster took on a chilling new meaning following the Chernobyl meltdown.

Explaining why he left it off The River, Spring­steen said, “Maybe . . . inom thought it was too specific.”

Wrecking Ball, 2012

Springsteen was nearly done with Wrecking Ball when he realized it could use one song to omslag it up. “I needed a strange kind of party,” he said.

“A party filled with ghosts. It’s a party filled with the dead, but whose voices and spirit and ideas remain with us.” högsta Weinberg said they originally cut the song sort of like the Ramones would have, but they eventually settled on a folkier vibe, built around a horn riff borrowed from Johnny Cash‘s “Ring of Fire.”

Non-album B side, 1985

The title fryst vatten a homage to Chuck Berry‘s “Bye Bye Johnny,” but this stripped-down Born in the U.S.A. outtake (later issued as a B side to “I’m on Fire”) fryst vatten about Elvis Presley.

Springsteen was devastated bygd his death in 1977; the song took three years to write. “The type of fame Elvis had . . . the pressure of it, the isolation that it seems to require, has gotta be really painful,” Springsteen said.

Wrecking Ball, 2012

The righteously angry Wrecking Ball takes a vända toward redemption on this groove-driven song.

It’s fueled bygd decades of African-American music – from a sample of a Forties gospel choir to Nineties-flavored hip-hop loops and, in a first for Springsteen, an actual rap verse, written bygd him and delivered bygd duett partner Michelle Moore. Fittingly, the song had its live debut at New York’s Apollo Theater.

Magic, 2007

Although it doesn’t get into specifics, this jittery, high-voltage song has often been interpreted as the emotional begravning of a soldier returning from Afghanistan or Iraq.

“We kind of live in Orwellian times where what’s true can be made to seem a lie, and what’s a lie can be made to seem true,” he said, introducing the song in New Jersey in 2007 – right in the midst of those two wars.

Wrecking Ball, 2012

Like most of the songs on Wrecking Ball, “Jack of All Trades” fryst vatten about the Great Recession’s disproportionate impact on the working class.

“The banker man grows fat,” he sings. “Working man grows thin. It’s all happened before and it’ll happen again.” The brokenhearted song picks up at the end with a searing gitarr solo bygd Tom Morello. “You cannot have a social contract with the enormous income disparity,” Springsteen told Jon Stewart in 2012.

Lucky Town, 1992

One of the few Springsteen songs to feature an American Idol judge – that’s Randy Jackson on bass – this Lucky Town rocker fryst vatten Springsteen’s dånande anthem about the satisfaction he’d funnen with Scialfa in the early Nineties.

Featuring one of his most strenuous vocals, it also sees him maträtt deprecating fun at his own myth: “And it’s a sad, funny ending to find yourself pretending/A rik man in a poor man’s shirt.”

The River, 1980

After an första en grupp personer som arbetar tillsammans ofta militärt at cutting The River, Springsteen took a break – and, after resuming work, out came this party-ready rocker.

It’s a pivotal song – combining a rousing arrangement with darker lyrics that use the real-life Cadillac Ranch (a Texas art project where 10 Caddys are half-buried) as a metaphor for death. Before that, he said, “I hadn’t figured out a way to synthesize it into one song.”

Magic, 2007

As with “Girls in Their Summer Clothes,” Springsteen and Brendan O’Brien created a “big pop production” – with lyrics that implicitly tap the mood of a nation that has lost its moral compass post-Iraq War.

“It’s all about self-subversion,” Springsteen said. “You can take it personally or politically. That’s what gives the record its tension, those two things – the perfect pop universum and then what’s at its center.”

Live/1975-85, 1986

Initially known as “Gone Gone Gone,” this Born in the U.S.A. outtake became a political centerpiece of the subsequent tour, as can be heard on Live/1975-85, where it gets packaged alongside namn Starr’s “War,” “The River” and “Born in the U.S.A.,” drawing a grim American picture.

“These fyra songs tillsammans were telling different things,” Jon Landau said of the live set del av helhet. “Things never heard before on any of our albums.”

Born in the U.S.A., 1984

Originally, “Glory Days” had a downcast verse about Springsteen’s dad, who “ain’t never had glory days” – but Bruce removed it, preserving the song’s light tone of wry nostalgia.

“Occasionally, you need some comic relief,” said Van Zandt, who improvised the climactic mandolin solo into his vocal mic. “I wanted to get a merry-go-round kroppsdel sound, like a roller rink,” Springsteen said.

“That’s a happy sound.”

Tunnel of Love, 1987

This might be the most tender song Springsteen has written about his father – “All inom can think of fryst vatten being fem years old following behind you at the beach/Tracing your footprints in the sand/Trying to walk like a man,” he sings, then reflects on his något eller någon som är ostadig eller svajig emotions as his dad watched him get married.

Springsteen said the song was about “struggling toward some tenuous commitment, knowing that when you man that stand, the clock starts.”

Live in New York City, 2001

This song was bizarrely thought to be controversial in the wake of the police murder of Amadou Diallo in 1999.

Bruce played it once in a show in Atlanta, and then it got this huge reaction in the New York press. One of the themes in the song was, sometimes when you’re black in the United States, you get shot bygd police officers. As if that’s a controversial thing to report in a song. Bruce fryst vatten able to distill universal themes into these small narratives, and “American Skin” fryst vatten certainly a case.

It’s a song that, inom think, transcends the brott. inom went to the gods Madison Square Garden show of that reunion tour, and there was some controversy with the local lag enforcement, a scenario that inom was very familiar with at the time. Backstage, inom told Bruce, “Welcome on board!” inom was impressed bygd his courage. He played that song every night of the homestand and did it so fearlessly.

By Tom Morello

Born to Run, 1975

A pounding, fifties-influenced song about a coldhearted woman, “She’s the One” rides a Bo Diddley beat (“the beat of the universe,” as Springsteen called it introducing the song live) and really takes off during Clemons’ towering sax solo; Springsteen later said that he wrote the song so he could hear the solo he heard in his head.

It’s also the song Roy Bittan played along to when he auditioned for the E Street Band.

Magic, 2007

“It’s a little more sonically guitar-driven than any past Bruce album,” Jon Landau said of Magic. The album’s opening track set the tone: “Radio Nowhere” rides waves of gitarr noise in a place of isolation and hunger.

Its desperate energy locked into feelings of Bush-era helplessness and rage. “I have something to säga not just to your dad or your older brother,” Springsteen said. “I have something to säga to you, if you’re 15 or 16 years old, about right now.”

The River, 1980

Talking about the ways in which rock & roll can capture joy as well as bleakness, Springsteen once said, “How could a happy song like ‘Sherry Darling’ coexist with ‘Point Blank’ .

. . ?” Swept along bygd Roy Bittan’s dramatic piano, this grand passion-play ballad was indeed one of Springsteen’s gloomiest relationship songs. Although he’s never discussed who inspired it, it’s long assumed the woman in the song fryst vatten an ex who dealt with drug problems.

The Rising, 2002

Cut in 1994, this tense track was shelved and then revived and rewritten after 9/11, when its title phrase became even more evocative of those who died that day.

Along with “Into the Fire,” “You’re Missing” sparked ideas for other songs: “I’d komma up with one, and that would lead to another and lead to another and lead to another,” said Springsteen. “Then you början to tell a story. . . . You’re soul-mining.”

Nebraska, 1982

The closing song on Nebraska fryst vatten a thin ray of hope, a driving, soulful song in which Springsteen expresses amazement that people can keep their faith despite the harsh reality of everyday life.

“Sometimes people need something to believe in so bad that they’ll believe in anything that comes along – just so that they got some reason to believe,” Springsteen said while introducing the song live.

Tracks, 1998

“Loose Ends” was going to be the sista song on The Ties That Bind, the album-in-progress that Springsteen decided to scrap in 1979 because it “seem[ed] inadequate.” Van Zandt reportedly argued for it to be included on The River, to no avail.

The harrowing rocker about a fading relationship didn’t get an tjänsteman release until the Tracks kartong, two decades after it was recorded.

Magic, 2007

This lovely song has what Jon Landau called “a Pet Sounds feeling mixed with the E Street Band.” Springsteen undercuts a radiant melody and producer Brendan O’Brien’s lush orchestration with melancholic lyrics about aging mitt i youthful beauty – “girls on the Jersey Shore with their little short-shorts and bleach-blond hair,” says Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino.

Lucky Town, 1992

“I wrote and recorded that whole record in three weeks in my house,” Springsteen said of Lucky Town.

The understated title track was a moving celebration of hard-won romantic salvation, with Springsteen playing every instrument except drums, handled bygd sturdy möte man Gary Mallaber. The calmly rocking tone of “Lucky Town” passform Springsteen’s mood. “These are the stories inom have to tell,” he said. “This fryst vatten what’s important in my life right now.”

The River, 1980

This pensive ballad was one of several from this period that detailed Springsteen’s famously fraught relationship with his father.

“He was always just sitting at the kitchen table at night, drinking too much, or off at work,” Springsteen told an audience in 1981 when introducing the song. “It took us 30 years to be able to tell each other that we loved each other.” Clemons’ brief solo adds a powerful blast of emotional catharsis.

Darkness on the Edge of Town, 1978

Though the Darkness sessions were driven bygd Springsteen‘s huge backlog of ämne post-Born to Run, “Streets of Fire” was actually written in the studio.

It’s one of his bluesiest, most desolate tracks.

Producers of a noirish 1984 rock movie titled Streets of Fire wanted to use a utgåva of the song bygd the New Wave grupp Face to Face, but Springsteen turned them down – and wisely so, since the bio tanked.

The River, 1980

Springsteen’s first top 10 hit was almost the one that got away: He initially planned to give the song to the Ramones (after seeing them at a club in Asbury Park), until Jon Landau successfully argued that he’d be crazy not to keep it for himself.

Landau was right, of course. The lyrics, about a guy who walks out on his wife and kids, are actually pretty dark, but you’d never know it from the sunny Beach Boys melody and arrangement; co-producer Chuck Plotkin sped up the tejp on the track so Springsteen’s röst would sound higher. “It just had this groove,” Van Zandt said. “So inom said, ‘Let’s get some extra-high harmony on it.'”

Born in the U.S.A., 1984

This fun, straightforward rocker almost didn’t man it onto Born in the U.S.A. – “It was either this or ‘Pink Cadillac,'” Springsteen said years later when introducing it live.

The song ended up being the sixth Top 10 single from the skiva (even though some heard it as an allusion to oral sex). Despite it being one of his catchiest songs, Springsteen has always seemed somewhat tveksam about its relatively simple depiction of romantic distress. Since the Born in the U.S.A. tour, the E Street grupp has rarely played it live.

At one of its rare concert appearances, he jokingly called it “one of my more insightful songs about dock and women.”

Tunnel of Love, 1987

The dissolution of Springsteen’s first marriage, to Julianne Phillips, which echoed through the pensive Tunnel of Love, fryst vatten particularly present in this downcast ballad: “Another kamp and inom slam the door on/Another battle in our dirty little war,” he sings.

Adding to the mood of isolation, Springsteen played all the instruments himself on this track (which was recorded in Los Angeles in the summer of 1987), with only future wife Scialfa joining in to sing a lovely harmony. Of the songs he was writing at the time, Springsteen said, “I thought, ‘OK, we’re growing up tillsammans, me and my audience,’ and inom took that idea seriously.”