"DRESSED IN SNAKESKIN SUITS PACKED WITH DETROIT MUSCLE"

I grew up in New Jersey and have lived here my entire life.  

 

I don’t have any particular feelings on whether it’s called “pork roll” or “Taylor Ham.”  And I’ve never heard a single person (in seriousness) pronounce it “New Joisey” in 41 years.  I’ve also never directly experienced anything which would lead me to identify the state as unclean or “dirty.”  Granted, NJ (along with California and Pennsylvania) has the most superfund toxic waste sites in the country, so there is that.  

 

The traffic and aggressive driving are real, as it is the most densely populated state per square mile in the nation.  There may be a lot of Italians, but there are also high numbers of Indian people, Puerto Rican people, and Chinese people.  I’ve never been to the Pine Barrens, nor seen the Jersey Devil, but I have traveled on many purportedly haunted roads detailed across the Weird NJ publication, including the fabled Clinton Road.

 

There are a lot of famous people from the area, including Frank Sinatra, John Travolta, Allen Ginsberg, James Gandolfini, and Meryl Streep.  And when you dine out, it’s not uncommon to see plaques and framed signatures or news articles about such figures in the many pizza parlors/Italian restaurants across the state.  Standing beside these memorabilia, it somehow makes inherent sense on a molecular level for Sinatra to have eaten at a pizzeria in Denville during the Big Band era, or for Kelsey Grammer to have stopped in at the Jefferson Diner (not a New Jerseyite, but frequent visitor).

 

New Jersey has major urban cities, but also large swaths of rural, less populated farmland.  It is home to Newark Liberty Airport, ranking in the top 30 for size and top 15 for traffic.  And it also features a multitude of picturesque shore points, including the iconic Wildwood, New Jersey, a place my family found themselves visiting for one to two weeks each summer without fail starting in the mid-to-late ‘80s.  I don’t know how to describe Wildwood without too heavily romanticizing it, but the timeless spirit and aching of youth feel somehow amplified in this place, punctuated through the bygone 1950s Doo Wop culture, the brightly lit neon motel signs, and an undying undercurrent of Americana and maximalist sentimentality.  For me, it’s simply a good place full of happy memories: unstructured quality time with parents and siblings, swimming in pools as well as the very-cold Atlantic ocean, boardwalk rides and games, and a life lived on and beside the Tram Car.

 

I’ve been alive to experience three near total solar eclipses (1991, 2017, and 2024), for which I feel very fortunate.  And this I owe to having been born right here.  In New Jersey.

 

But if you want the truth, beyond the varied landscapes and people, beyond the crowds, gardens and state parks, beyond a state filled to the brim with metallic diners, beyond the sometimes Republican, sometimes Democratic governing, there is something more arresting about living in New Jersey than anything else…

 

My eldest sister’s love of Bruce Springsteen.  

 

Bruce is one of music history’s most famous artists and has inspired a culture of fan devotion (and devoutness) unlike almost any other.  Of course, modern artists like Taylor Swift and her “Swifties” might have a thing or two to say about it, but for me, having been born in 1982, Bruce Springsteen was played early, often, and endlessly in my home, and it was clear that for my sister Ruth, he represented something of a Messianic figure.

 

I grew up with exposure to a lot of different music.  My brother was born in 1970, so I heard plenty of Pink Floyd, Rush, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Doors, Simon & Garfunkel, and Yes.  I had a couple of other sisters as well who listened to Skid Row, Guns ‘N’ Roses, Poison, Warrant, Motley Crue, Richard Marx, and Billy Joel.  Ruth, born 1966, listened to a lot of different music herself including Genesis, Tom Petty, The Rolling Stones, R.E.M., U2, Michael Jackson, The Police, and many others.  My own growing obsession with music as a child included Grunge-era bands like Pearl Jam, Counting Crows, and other 90’s nu-metal artists such as Tool and System of a Down.  

 

But through all of it, the music most often heard in my house that I can recall was Bruce Springsteen.  As a result, I have never had an open mind or positive attitude about Bruce’s music due to the extreme suffocation I felt in my youth.  

 

My sister lived in a constant state of proselytization, a Springsteenian missionary.  There was rarely a time when she wasn’t attempting to convert non-believers (which comprised all the family save her) about the merits of Bruce’s musical talent and lyrical relevance.  I have many memories of my sister printing out lyrics, forcing my parents to listen, and talking about how Bruce was the modern Shakespeare.  I say that without judgment at this point in my life.  I admire my sister for diving deep into her interests to the point of being so consumed by them that her life is made more magical.  There’s high value in fully immersing oneself in one’s interests without coming up for air.

 

That said, my sister is one of the Bruce devotees who has been to hundreds of shows and has followed his tour schedule through other countries at times.  She’s never revealed the actual number of concerts attended, but I wouldn’t be shocked if it was well past 1,000 shows.  Could it be 2,000 shows?  I have no idea.  My sister is part of a secret order of Bruce fans who track his movements and communicate through back channels to intercept his pop-up performances, for which he is notorious.  And all prior to the modern digital age, social media, and omnipresent GPS/street cameras allowing for ease of mass coordination and fan-surveilling.

 

I don’t know if you might also know people like this, but for the longest time (read: decades) every single topic, no matter political, religious, personal, school or career-based, cooking and dining, media or sports… somehow related back to Bruce.  She adeptly and consistently steered all conversation to Springsteen.  As young children, back in the days before cell phones, my little sister and I were regularly recruited for dialing into radio shows on different house lines for the chance to win concert tickets.  One of my first live concerts, of course, was a Bruce Springsteen show.  To this day, Bruce’s music can be heard blasting in my sister’s car wherever she travels.  When driving my parents to family functions, now aged in their mid 80s, there is but one option: Springsteen for the entire ride.  It was the same when I was a kid, having driven home from Wildwood a handful of times with my sister.  I remember just a few things: a lot of rules about not eating in the car, lack of air conditioning, and a full on Bruce tsunami.

 

The result of all this obsession, for me, was that there was never any space.  No space to actually consider a song or album for what it was.  No space to form an opinion.  There was such a constant and overwhelming push to promote Bruce Springsteen as the unquestioned “best” that I completely shut down all possibility of enjoying his music.  Having been regaled with all kinds of superfan knowledge about the verbosity of his early lyrics and his uncompromising vision, or what the cultural impact was of a song that politicians clearly didn’t understand such as “Born in the U.S.A.,” I never felt any desire to learn about Bruce Springsteen or to consider his work.

 

The other day on a whim, using Spotify in my car, I pulled up his artist profile.  Listening to the first few songs, I immediately realized that I knew all the words, despite never having closely listened to Bruce.  And I also discovered that some of it was pretty catchy.  I’m sure there are some who might see that statement as a horrifying reduction of an artist’s storied career, but I mean nothing negative.  I only mean that despite having been closed off to Springsteen my entire life, it surprised me that the songs sounded pleasant, fun, and in many ways, interesting.  This inspired me to listen to the top 10 most played Bruce songs across Spotify, and to give my modern opinion of them.  Finally, I have come to a place in my life with enough separation from the push to explore my own openness about this artist.  

 

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

 

1. “Dancing in the Dark” (album: Born in the U.S.A., 1984)

 

The story I read was that Bruce’s producer listened to the unfinished album and informed Bruce that it didn’t have a hit single.  Bruce went home that night, presumably annoyed, and wrote the song that would go on to endure as the most popular of his entire career.  With lyrics like “You can’t start a fire without a spark / this gun’s for hire / even if we’re just dancing in the dark,” the artist’s frustration in being asked for one last banger after the writing had wrapped is clear, and so too his disenfranchisement with the business side of the industry.  Sonically, it’s a tight, up-tempo song that’s easy to get up and dance to, which of course belies the deeper expression of what Springsteen is venting about.  The idea of a song’s musical tenor not being quite in step with the lyrical content is a pattern we’ll see again on this list.  Song grade: A

 

2. “I’m On Fire” (album: Born in the U.S.A., 1984)

 

From the muted arpeggios guitar plucking to the drawn out synth, it doesn’t get more 80s than this song.  It’s also ironic that “I’m On Fire” is the second most played song on Spotify given the story around “Dancing in the Dark.”  Clearly, the album had some hits good enough for the radio.  At 2 minutes and 35 seconds, this song is extremely short, maybe tragically so based on how atmospheric and moody it is (and how re-listenable).  

 

It also makes me appreciate just how much of a Springsteen acolyte Jack Antonoff (Fun!, Bleachers) is, who often talks about being on fire in the lyrics of his various projects, including his fictional band Baby Goya and the Nuclear Winter as seen in the movie “Hello, Dorris” with Sally Field.  Antonoff, to continue with the aside, is a pretty important music producer from the last 15 years, having produced for Taylor Swift, The 1975, Lorde, St. Vincent, Lana Del Rey, Sia, FKA Twigs, Tegan & Sara, Grimes, etc., clearly heavily influenced by Bruce’s music.  Bleachers’ first album was titled “Strange Desire” (a bit coincidentally similar to the “bad desire” phrase from this song).  Another aside: Zach Bryan, who is an immensely popular country/crossover star of today, has a song called “Sandpaper,” which as luck would have it features Bruce, and its construction and rhythm feel very borrowed…  I think some would consider Bryan the spiritual heir apparent to Springsteen, selling out stadiums left and right and having such widespread appeal outside of a single genre.

 

“I’m On Fire” is an interesting mix of country crooner-tinged vocals imbued with the characteristic emotionally obsessive intensity common to films like Cameron Crowe’s “Say Anything.”  Now, I do have to comment that the lyrics of this song strike me as weird, or possibly even “cringe” by the standards of the mid 2020s.

 

“Hey little girl is your daddy home / did he go and leave you all alone / I got a bad desire / oh oh I’m on fire / Tell me now baby is he good to you / and can he do to you the things that I do?”

 

It kind of plays like a really horny guy trying to “out-man” his girlfriend’s dad...  I dunno.  Something about it doesn’t sound entirely kosher.  Keep it in your pants, 34-year-old Bruce.  Song grade: A-

 

3. “Streets of Philadelphia” (album: Philadelphia Soundtrack, 1993)

 

The singing on this song brings me back to a note from the above review: Bruce is essentially employing the drawl of a country singer.  I don’t think I’d ever considered this in my earlier disdain for Springsteen, but as I consider it now, it feels like a stroke of brilliance to be able to sing in a way that appeals to rural tranches of the listening public, offering something a bit familiar, a bit Willie Nelson let’s say, while also being able to capture rock, pop, folk, and indie audiences with other elements of the instrumentation.  I was less open to the rural vocals in my earlier life, so this is perhaps an additional reason for my renewed openness to Bruce’s music.  At any rate, this particular song has never really resonated with me, and it still doesn’t.  The lyrics are somewhat on the nose for the subject matter of the film, but leave it to Bruce to write the third most popular song of his career for a movie about AIDS.  Not easy to do.  Song grade: C+

 

4. “Born in the U.S.A.” (album: Born in the U.S.A, 1984)

 

Ah, Bruce’s subversive song about being an American that every so often pops up as some politician’s jingoistic background music…  Plenty of music scholars have no doubt authored dissertations on the song’s meaning, its portrayal of the Vietnam War, and life at home thereafter, so there’s no need to do that here.  The lyrics are clear and undoubtedly excoriating: “Got in a little hometown jam / So they put a rifle in my hand / Sent me off to a foreign land / To go and kill the yellow man.”  The subversiveness isn’t with the lyrics themselves, though.  It’s the upbeat, fist-pumping musical nature of something that sounds more like “We Will Rock You” than it does a song openly decrying the perils of war and loss of American opportunity.  Song grade: B+

 

5. “Hungry Heart” (album: The River, 1980)

 

My sister relayed an anecdote many times to me decades ago about how Bruce wrote this song for The Ramones, but when his producer heard it, he forbade Bruce letting it go to another musician.  It’s a light-hearted (both lyrically and musically), bouncy song that seems to draw some inspiration from 50s Doo Wop, distilled into Springsteen’s signature sound with some 70s organ grooves throughout.  The song even features a glockenspiel!  Kudos, Bruce.  Definitely a song that people can dance to at weddings for generations to come.  The anecdote about the producer always seemed overly grandiose to me.  Song grade: B

 

6. “Born to Run” (album: Born to Run, 1975)

 

As someone who took great pride in transcribing Pearl Jam lyrics throughout the 90s - notorious for being difficult to discern - I really appreciate the low-enunciation nature of the opening line of this song: “In the day we sweat it out on the streets / of a runaway American dream…”  Eddie Vedder is another Springsteen devotee, and his early Bad Radio demos which he used to audition for the band include covers of “Atlantic City” and “One Step Up.”  As I listen to “Born to Run,” this strikes me as a good example of the hyper-lyricism that my sister always talked about.  Lines are packed with words, and the effect feels at once bloated and also extremely effective.  A lot is being said in this track, and there are countless turns of phrase which come off as captivating in their unique construction: 

 

“At night we ride through the mansions of glory / In suicide machines

Sprung from cages on Highway 9 / Chrome wheeled, fuel injected, and steppin' out over the line”

 

“Beyond the Palace, hemi-powered drones / Scream down the boulevard

Girls comb their hair in rearview mirrors / And the boys try to look so hard

The amusement park rises bold and stark / Kids are huddled on the beach in the mist

I wanna die with you, Wendy, on the street tonight / In an everlasting kiss”

 

While the purpose of this article is not to interpret Bruce’s lyrics, this song conveys a very universal and relatable theme of wanting to escape a place or situation, and either not being able, or simply feeling stuck.  The intense romance (or fusion) with the Wendy character mentioned throughout provides an additional layer to the theme, enabling the overall pathos of the song to rise to a place of high poignance.  Song grade: A

 

7. “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” (album: Sesame Street, In Harmony 2, 1981)

 

Born of a live December 1975 set at the C.W. Post College in Brooklyn, “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” would become a massive crossover success in holiday music.  The Christmas-crooning pantheon had usually been reserved for the rarified likes of Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, and so on.  A young rock musician out of Jersey cracking into the lineup… not bad.  Personally, as someone who loves Christmas music and who owns a large physical-media collection (from all of the above and more), this song always endeared Bruce a bit to me, even if ever so slightly as to being hard to admit for a while.  The song undeniably engenders a feeling of happiness and lightheartedness that most people crave around the holidays, and often cannot reach.

 

The opening keyboard tempo alongside the truly silly “It’s all cold down on the beach” lyrical premise (which makes me laugh almost every time), followed by several lines of Springsteen asking if his bandmates know what time of year it is… creates a kind of legitimate magic in the air.  I have to admit that.  And it only gets more absurd from there, as mid-20s Bruce poses additional questions:

 

“You guys all, you guys all been good and practicing real hard? Yeah?

Clarence, you been, you been rehearsing real hard now

So Santa'll bring you a new saxophone, right?

Everybody out there been good or what?

Oh, that's not many, not many, you guys are in trouble out here”

 

And then the true genius happens.  “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” begins in earnest, except, it sounds nothing like that song.  The words are the same.  But Bruce makes this his own song in a way I’ve never seen with Christmas music covers.  He makes it cool.  It’s no longer a bouncy, hokey children’s song in this world.  It’s something altogether different, and it takes on a whole new relevancy.  I Googled if this was an improvisation, and apparently it was not, based on the 1963 Phil Spector arrangement for The Crystals.  That said, The Crystals’ version does not come close to accomplishing the same transmutation into something universal and important.  I love that this song is the 7th most played song throughout the catalog.  Song grade: A

 

8. “Glory Days” (album: Born in the U.S.A., 1984)

 

This is a song one could easily imagine playing in a honky tonk, which again drives the point that there appears to be a lot of overlap in Bruce’s style with country music.  That’s not a bad thing - I just think it’s interesting, as I imagine most of his diehard fans would talk about his folk influences but probably wouldn’t go so far as to call him a country musician.  “Glory Days” is a light-hearted song about the good ole days.  I can’t say the lyrics or music are particularly interesting, but I imagine droves of followers singing this in unison at some dive bar while spilling beers all over each other and the floor.  Song grade: C

 

9. Thunder Road (album: Born to Run, 1975)

 

From what I understand and know of Bruce, he is a good harmonica player and has utilized it a lot across his career.  Here, the harmonica opens the song, the first time we’ve seen it in his top 10.  The glockenspiel is again present, which I now come to realize is part and parcel to this band’s signature sound... guess everyone else knew what those high pitched dings were this whole time.  At any rate, I can see why throngs of adoring women came to catapult Bruce into heartthrob status.  After all, he’s tough.  He’s a young 26 year old punk in 1975.  He knows about cars.  He knows what it means to struggle.  He has a brain and something to say about decay and the American dream.  And he’s apparently self-deprecating and realistic too in his expectations.  I mean… I get it.  Hubba hubba. 

 

“You can hide 'neath your covers and study your pain

Make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain

Waste your summer praying in vain, for a savior to rise from these streets

Well now, I'm no hero, that's understood

All the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood

With a chance to make it good somehow

Hey, what else can we do now?”

 

Song grade: B+

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10. “The River” (album: The River, 1980)

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The harmonica returns to the list to open this song, giving way to quiet guitar plucking, coalescing into a mature, somber sound.  And in this instance, the sonic quality does closely match the lyrical content, which appears to be about two youthful individuals making some questionable choices and then being trapped by them.

 

“Then I got Mary pregnant / And man, that was all she wrote

And for my nineteenth birthday / I got a union card and a wedding coat

We went down to the courthouse / And the judge put it all to rest

No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle / No flowers, no wedding dress”

 

Bruce goes on to speak about a withering economy without available work, and being haunted by memories and decisions he’s made.  I believe in 2012 it was revealed that this song was inspired by Springsteen’s sister and brother-in-law.  It’s a solid song that no doubt added to the gravitas of Springsteen's reputation as a folk-hero everyman who could see, stand with, and articulate the problems around him into compelling audio tracks for an album.  It’s not the catchiest of tunes in a top 10 list, but it was a portent of things to come.  Song grade: A-

 

Honorable Mentions for Discussion

 

“Atlantic City” (Nebraska, 1982) is my favorite Springsteen song.  It has it all: a warm guitar, multiple vocal tracks contributing to a bare bones low-fi recording, a relaxing but chugging pace, an opening lyric about a chicken man, signature themes about joblessness and an aching feeling of youthful romance, and all of it enmeshed into lines about the very famous Atlantic City, New Jersey.  How this doesn’t crack the top 10 and clocks in at 20 on Spotify I will never understand.  

 

“The E Street Shuffle” (The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, 1973) is the only song prior to 1975 I am mentioning.  It’s not a song I recall hearing when I was living with my sister all those years ago.  I’m sure she would be the first to point out that Springsteen’s first two albums have some great stuff on them (this being from his second album), but this wasn’t one that was ever on my radar.  It is however easy to see how the style from this song evolved.  It features many classic elements already discussed on this list such as hyper-lyricism, car references, an overall observational depiction of the world going on around him, and summer nights.  But here more than most songs on the list, it really plays as though the E Street band is having fun.  The song is somehow at once jazzy and funky, with many moving and changing parts.  Even Bruce’s singing is very disregulated (I mean that as a complement), as he sings in a manner where it’s difficult to determine what he’ll do next, or how long he’ll let a lyric bleed out into the next.  The thing that also strikes me about the singing is that it hearkens to Thin Lizzy, one of Bruce’s peers.  Their most famous album “Jailbreak” was released in 1976, but their first came out in 1971.  Not sure who was influencing whom, but the sound on “E Street” definitely boasts a Thin Lizzy feel.  And that’s a great thing.

 

Conclusion

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Casually listening to an artist’s top-10-most-streamed isn’t going to yield a very robust picture of that musician, to be sure.  Musicians who produce music over the course of decades undergo a lot of change, or some may undergo surprisingly little.  Ten songs can’t encapsulate longitudinal growth.  But the Spotify top-10 at least tells us what fans (writ large) have collectively decided are the most listenable songs.  Whether that equates to “best” or “most interesting” or “most complex” or “most important” is a different discussion.  For me, a person who had a distinct distaste for Bruce Springsteen much of my life, it was rewarding diving in and trying to listen to the songs without the bias I long carried.  I may not have been blinded by the light as result of the exercise, but I do think I have come away with a greater appreciation for the music and for the artist that so many superfans have devoted their time toward.  And while I am no music historian, I have enjoyed attempting to understand something more openly which is of core importance to my sister’s earthly experience.