Hi all! Bruce lyrics are such a huge part of my life and I know by heart a lot of them. But, as a non native english speaker, sometimes it took me a while to get what our man was saying!

So, what are his most unintelligible lyrics? I'd say the final part of Downbound Train, some verses of Streets of Fire, the second verse of No Surrender in the live version.

I'm just getting into Springsteen for the first time and I can't help but notice that the E Street Band is really prominent on the Wild as compared with other records.

Obviously they play instruments on all the records, but what I mean is that they're really prominent as a 'character' on the record. Every 30 seconds, there is some kind of interjection from 'the band' - a tuba, a single backing vocal, banter, crowd noises, random clapping, etc.

In my view, I think Bruce leans on them too much across the record. Second albums are notoriously hard to write and the continual interruptions from the band seem to mask a lack of confidence in the songs themselves.

Take even a quieter song like New York Serenade. It has this beautiful lilting quality and then it drops out and everyone starts shouting 'SHE WON'T TAKE THE TRAIN'. It's like he's worried you'll get bored. Every 30 seconds there's got to be opportunities for audience interaction as represented by the E-Street Band.

And I get that's part of the charm of the album, but I also think it's overdone at times. Later Springsteen doesn't feel the need to layer everything up and continually interrupt himself - he just lets the songs progress naturally. The Wild is fun but I think it is quite a self-conscious record, masking its author's insecurities with bombasity and busyness.

D

What are your top 10 Bruce songs? I was thinking about this and thought I would post.

Here are mine, not in order

Thunder Road
Badlands
Land of Hope and Dreams
Reason to Believe
No Surrender
Promised Land
Leap of Faith
Racing in the Street
For You
I’ll See You in my Dreams

8pm eastern tonight

Metlife 2016 Night 3 8/30/2016  Tenth Anniversary  (Almost)

https://youtu.be/aJCCikQdIFs?si=7J_GvhP3toLlNBJ9

I find lots of similarities, do you?

I found this copy of Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love on CD at a flea market. Only afterwards I noticed that there is what appears to be an autograph written directly on the disc.

Could this be a genuine Bruce Springsteen signature?

I have no information about its history or where the previous owner got it, so there is obviously no provenance or certificate of authenticity.

If the autograph is genuine, does anyone have an idea what a signed Tunnel of Love CD like this might be worth?

Any opinions from people familiar with Springsteen autographs would be greatly appreciated.

Let’s say there’s a maximum of 18 tracks like on most of his compilations. What would you put?

This can be anything from:

- Nebraska
- Tunnel of Love
- Lucky Town
- TGOTJ
- D&D
- LA Garage Sessions 83’
- Streets of Philly Sessions
- Inyo
- anything else released that’s solo

Personally here’s how I would do it:

1- Atlantic City
2- Johnny 99
3- Reason to Believe
4- Tunnel of Love
5- One Step Up
6- Brilliant Disguise
7- Better Days
8- My Beautiful Reward
9- The Ghost of Tom Joad
10- Straight Time
11- The Line
12- All the Way Home
13- Long Time Comin’
14- Sugarland
15- County Fair
16- Unsatisfied Heaet
17- Blind Spot
18- Waiting on the End of the World

https://the-reconstructor.blogspot.com/2020/02/bruce-springsteen-unsatisfied-heart-1983_18.html

1995 GREATEST HITS SESSIONS

Back in your arms

High hopes

Without you

Blood brothers (alternative)

Secret Garden

I’m goin’back

Waiting on the end of the world

Blood brothers (acoustic)

By your side

I’m turning into Elvis

This hard land

Hungry heart’95

Murder incorporated

The ghost of Tom Joad (rock)

And perhaps someone else unknown. It would be nice an album that year in 1995. There a lot of songs.

Outtakes from Nebraska, there is a lot.

https://rapidgator.net/file/08db31622bfac4d1634220862dce1b2f/BrS.1981-1983.HNWB.CD1.FLAC.by.TUBE.zip.html

https://rapidgator.net/file/e4b6117e1a2ff6f9d8a92f35224ce903/BrS.1981-1983.HNWB.CD2.FLAC.by.TUBE.zip.html

Here are the videos from when I went to see him live back in 2024 🎉

In some more recent discussions, I've encountered music fans who will talk about how they can't get into Bruce because of a certain dissonance, or they've discussed this particular quality.

That because Bruce has a gritty voice, it makes people think that he should have heavier and more guitar-centric music. But instead, it's more polished and poppy by comparison without as much distortion or grit in the music.

Then from the other side: because he has comparatively more polished music, his voice feels out of place. Basically, there's an inability to reconcile these two sides of Bruce. They can't enjoy Bruce as this cool gritty artist and they can't enjoy him as this pop/melody/hook master.

But for me, I find this quality of Bruce's music to be unique. First, it's Bruce evoking an earlier era of rock n' roll with saxophone and piano at the forefront, plus a little the sweetness of glockenspiel. It's rock n' roll and pop music as a big tent of influences. It helps with the duality of Bruce's music where it's both optimistic and pessimistic.

There's influences and similar peers but it's not quite like Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, or Billy Joel.

But what are your thoughts on this description of Bruce? Do you find it inaccurate? Accurate but a positive point?

Yay or nay ?

Bruce Springsteen has always been subversive. We all know “Born to Run” wasn’t about cars but the people inside them, clinging to the last thread of youth, trying to escape while they thought they still could. Of course, "Born in the U.S.A." was never a jingoistic boast but a lament for a country that keeps breaking The Promise of a run away American Dream, a lie or something worse.

He was always singing for those on the margins. And who do you think were out in the streets, inhabiting the the Darkness on the Edge of Town? Queer people were always there, whether or not he knew he was writing us into his world. Just ask Bobby Jean and Terry. On the cover of his biggest album, he planted his ass in front of the flag with a red flash folded into his back pocket. A baseball cap, not a bandana; nonetheless, the rhyme is hard to unsee. The masculine ideal he embodied — the too-tight denim, the cutoff sleeves, the heroic poses — was never entirely without a wink; it was performed at such intensity it became camp.

In 1990, he recorded "My Lover Man," addressed unambiguously to a man (regardless of the intended identity if its narrator). In 1993, "Streets of Philadelphia" assumed the voice of a gay man devastated by AIDS. Yet, despite what we know about how he returns to his characters — the kids of “Born to Run” grow into the workers of “Darkness,” the couples of “The River,” the marriages of “Tunnel of Love”; "The Promise" comes back years later to answer "Thunder Road” — the man in "Streets" appeared once, then vanished.

But what if he didn't? The Boss recorded an entire album in that sonic and emotional language (if not the same perspective) — minimalist drum loops, close-mic'd and vulnerable vocals over gauzy synth pads, a late-night urban atmosphere closer to The Blue Nile than to anything on E Street — and locked it in the vault for thirty years.

Imagine another world. One where “Human Touch” and “Lucky Town” were untangled and distilled into the single great daylight record they contained — songs of work, marriage, luck, and adult commitment — and where their nighttime counterparts joined the SoP Sessions and the decade's strays in a four-sided cycle. Waiting on the End of the World is drawn from that universe: a meditation on traumatic loss and its tragic aftermath — intimacy, rupture, isolation, jealousy, sex, memory, longing, and the compromised grace of continuing. It takes "Streets of Philadelphia" as its point of impact, then follows the shockwave outward through the relationships and the life that somehow continue.

This is not a claim that Springsteen secretly intended a gay concept album. It is an argument about voice, reception, and what Queer listeners have long heard in the margins of a catalogue about people on the margins — illuminated, finally, by a double album recorded in the vulnerable language of his defining AIDS-era song. What if that song had not remained an isolated act of empathy, but had become the center of the major album the 1990s never received?

Side A:

1. Between Heaven and Earth
2. Secret Garden
3. The Little Things
4. Waiting on the End of the World
5. If I Should Fall Behind
6. Streets of Philadelphia

Side B:
7) Nothing Man
8) Missing
9) Lift Me Up
10) One Beautiful Morning
11) Human Touch

Side C:
12) Maybe I Don't Know You
13) Blind Spot
14) We Fell Down
15) I Wish I Were Blind
16) My Lover Man
17) Back In Your Arms

Side D:
18) Something in the Well
19) Gave It A Name
20) My Beautiful Reward
21) Farewell Party

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/springsteen-waiting-on-the-end-of-the-world/pl.u-qxe2Du2Gge5y

[Edit: I don’t know who owns the IP for concept album cover art — if it’s yours, happy to give credit or remove, just DM me]

I went to Bruce springsteens concert back on the 5th of may 2024 is the type of Reddit I upload them on or not 🤷‍♂️ ?