These days you don't wait on Romeos you wait on those BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN POLL RESULTS

for comparison: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN ALBUMS POLL

nebraska is the hipster fav and all the hipsters on ilx are gone or I guess they're just old now

id have voted for bitusa myself with darkness 2nd

Darkness has a couple of my all-time favorites but it's hard to get past ADAM RAIIIISED A CAIIIIIIIIIIN

i like nebraska fine but i think al said somewhere on ilx that having it as your favorite springsteen album makes it seem like you're not that into the whole springsteen thing, which i think is otm.

xpost but that guitar! it melts u face!

Nebraska became a favorite after a fan segment got turned off by the "overblown" BITUSA. As recently as 2000 I was still bumping into fans who thought BITUSA's popularity made assessment impossible.

'i dont like springsteen but i like nebraska' - me until 2004

i appreciate "Adam" and its place in the album more than i used to, but even when i hated it that didn't stop Darkness from being my favorite Bruce album

BITUSA's rep is definitely better now than it was 10 years ago. the early E Street reunion tours seemed to be very much about getting back to the '70s catalog and downplaying BITUSA -- did they ever start playing more from that album in recent years?

really the crime and tragedy here is the TUNNEL OF LOVE snub. should be top 3 at least.

It topped my poll. Then again, "i dont like springsteen but i like nebraska' - ILX until 2007"

er, TOL

tol is the new nebraska tho I don't think very many people say "I don't like springsteen but I like tol"

wait is that what alfred was trying to say

haha yes

even with BITUSA's correct repositioning in the canon, TOL's claque is a lot louder than BITUSA's.

"TOL didn't sell as many copies, but everyone who bought it formed an ILX thread."

hipsters in 2025 will refuse to listen to anything but 'the rising'

I love all you TOL'ers but that album is like Heijera for me with Joni Mitchell.

The *sound* on TOL is like a razor wire fence to my brain. I just can't relax into it. There's a couple of songs I like but even after re-listening a couple of weeks ago I was still making that being-force-fed-broccoli-face after a while :)

HIDDEN PREDICTORS: I generally approve of broccoli.

what's unattractive about it?

xpost

The River is the real fanboy pick, Darkness is too obvious

I think they're tied but it's def that era

the river has the advantage of having more songs

i had tol #1, darkness #2

xxpost Alfred: it's the synthy/fretless-bass sound I think. It just sounds really dated to me. And I guess a lot of that is maybe I don't have any really good nostalgia for other albums that sound like this? Like maybe it's my last frontier music-wise that I have not really reckoned with.

I mean, I dig Paul Simon's Graceland and that's a fretless bass free for all so I know that immediately makes me a hypocrite. I guess with Bruce on TOL, with the exception of Brilliant Disguise, there's no songs that can rise up enough to me lyric-wise to hook me into the music. Or vice versa. I come in lost and and I stay lost.

i have 2 tol tracks in my top 3, 4 on my ballot overall

my #1 is from tol

i guess what i'm saying guys is i like tol

ALOT

@VegemiteGrrl I think Tunnel of Love has some of Springsteen's best lyrics:
It's the same thing night on night
Who's wrong baby who's right
Another fight and I slam the door on
Another battle in our dirty little war
When I look at myself I don't see
The man I wanted to be
Somewhere along the line I slipped off track
I'm caught movin' one step up and two steps back

I had it at #4, although it only slipped a couple of songs onto my ballot.

there's fretless bass on TOL?

Springsteen played most of them on TOL; the only one that stands out is "All That Heaven Will Allow"s and maybe "Valentine Day."

I'm full of shit really is the truth of it.

no! Let's listen to "Two Faces" together. I need the company.

Tunnel Of Love has a pretty garish and dated sound, even just compared to BITUSA, so i can't fault anyone for being turned off by it, even if i think it's rewarding to be able to listen past it.

veg what's yr take on leonard cohen's i'm yr man?

it's kind of a shame that Bruce seems to have mostly done Tunnel himself so a lot of what you hear on the album are first drafts, so that you'll never hear really stark Nebraska-style demos of any of those songs (and i imagine he doesn't revisit them much on acoustic tours) xp

he did quite well on those first drafts though -- they sound like fully fledged songs. To me "dated" means the songs were okay/mediocre/terrible at the time and we've become aware of it thanks to our own age

To my ears on TOL he learned a lot about rhythm, programming, and momentum -- for his solo recordings -- such that the Nebraska tracks are really a grind to listen to.

I guess with Bruce on TOL, with the exception of Brilliant Disguise, there's no songs that can rise up enough to me lyric-wise to hook me into the music. Or vice versa. I come in lost and and I stay lost.

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, February 25, 2013

got to learn to live with what you can't rise above iirc

love 'em both, though sometimes (not often but sometimes) i prefer the trentemoller remix of 'state trooper' to the original

The worst track ("Spare Parts") is the E Street reunion, while the mostly solo "Two Faces" makes its point quickly, sports no cluttered arrangement, and has a couple of interesting ideas, like what sounds like a guitar fed through a keyboard amp and his roller rink organ solo.

i like nebraska fine but i think al said somewhere on ilx that having it as your favorite springsteen album makes it seem like you're not that into the whole springsteen thing, which i think is otm.

i'm into the whole springsteen thing, but with reservations. fave album: nebraska. second fave: born to run.

my reservations are mostly about production and arrangement; he seems to have been working off a fairly narrow palate over the past 25 or so years. a lot of times i don't hear songs; i hear templates. i also hear a lot of fussiness. nebraska is the sound of springsteen songs before he gets around to thinking of any of that. and they're really really good songs. and really great performances.

born to run sounds to me like he's jumping off a 100-story skyscraper full of phil spector brian wilson van morrison animals etc etc albums without a parachute or a net, confident that clarence clemons and roy bittan are standing there on the sidewalk ready to catch him. i love that too.

got to learn to live with what you can't rise above iirc
:D :D :D!!

I'm glad the results have taken so long. Gave me time to simmer down!

Alfred surely you must realize that you are way more attuned to the sound of late '80s gloss than most people -- i like it too, but there was a time when it would've sounded gross to me and i can't really knock people who can't get past it. on a purely sonic level i definitely prefer the '70s records, or even the milder modernization on Born In The USA.

so bummed to learn that horseshoe didn't vote! i was counting on your vote for "Out In The Street"!

late '80s gloss

side note on early '90s gloss: there's a tremendous difference in approach between bootlegs of his solo acoustic benefit shows for the christic institute in 1990, and the studio versions of the many of the same songs that showed up shortly afterward on human touch and lucky town. tapes of the christic shows were widely circulated before the albums came out, and i think they colored a lot of hardcore fans' reaction to the albums.

I grew into a music fan, really, at the time of mid-to-late 80s production techniques and trends, went through a looooong period of time where I couldn't revisit that stuff, then finally re-embraced it with open arms about a decade ago. Now, Tunnel of Love sounds magnificent to me, but I can totally understand the pov who haven't reconnected yet.

propinquity!

I have never used the word "propinquity," and feel a little ashamed to say I didn't even know such a word existed--belongs on some future Alanis Morissette album.

it does not mean what they think it means

"And isn't it propinquitious?
Don't you think?
It's like 10,000 Zamfirs, when all you need is a Vangelis."

Hmm, that's interesting. I think propinquity could work, at least sort of metaphorically, even if they mean it like propensity, predilection or any number of other words that start with P.

propinquitous people popularizing panflutes, painfully.

There was a band called Propinquity whose album was rereleased via Numero -- it's pretty good but I bought it for like $4 so it's $4 good.

Internet down today, just catching up.

WOW to LL's TOL story.

My Ballot:

40: State Trooper
36: Candy's Room
33: Atlantic City
30: Something In The Night
28: Spirit In The Night
26: Cadillac Ranch
25: Johnny 99
24: The Promised Land
23: Incident On 57th Street
22: Darkness On The Edge of Town
21: Cover Me
20: Kitty's Back
19: Livin' In The Future
18: The Ties That Bind
17: Sherry Darling
16: Open All Night
15: She's The One
14: Gypsy Biker
13: Meeting Across The River
12: Held Up Without A Gun

I equal-weighted my ballot so it's presented chronologically.

Biggest revelation for me: Tunnel of Love. I remember some of the singles (even voted for 1) but never owned the album. Gonna have to do something about that.

Biggest disconnect with other voters: Nebraska. It may be heresy on this thread but, try as I might, Nebraska doesn't do much for me. Tried again with the results rollout. Still not getting it.

Growing Up
Spirits in the Night
For You
Blinded by the Light
4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
Incident on 57th Street
Rosalita
New York City Serenade
Kitty's Back
She's the One
Thunder Road
Tenth Avenue Freeze Out
Backstreets
Candy's Room
Racing in the Streets
Point Blank
My Hometown
Dancing in the Dark
Tougher Than the Rest
Streets of Philadelphia

Albums:

Wild Innocent
Born to Run
Greetings
Darkness
Born in the USA

Because of this thread, I wrote this about Racing in the Street. Not quite what I wanted, cos I had to bash it out in a 20-min window. Hat tip to zachlyon for the Camaro observation.

wonderful article!! i expect royalties.

tbh i never even noticed the crystals reference. but i'm horrible with that sort of thing.

Great piece. 20 minutes! Gravitas only slightly undermined by the linked video being by sgtpepperspeepee.

I think the only reason he put the Camaro first was so that it would scan and rhyme.

sssssshhhhhhh

xpost Fortunate to be a very quick writer. Been thinking about the song all poll, so I knew what I was going to say. No blank paper in my head.

Roy Bittan's piano picking out a phrase adapted from the Crystals' Then He Kissed Me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0GfHJGmLQ8

Would pay to see Bruce do anything, but a whole Phil Spector set would be ... wow ...

Huh, just saw this, which is not so hot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve1BUGpatDk

But what a lovely song this one is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiD378AgSds

Kathryn Jean Lopez ‏@kathrynlopez

i confess, if @chucktodd asked me "Bon Jovi or Springsteen," I would not answer "Springsteen, of course"

Hi - can someone put up another link to the Spotify. xx

Jamie, could you post the whole list?

great piece ithappens

Thanks for the nice words.

Clarence's family suing his doctors for malpractice.

tol is the new nebraska tho I don't think very many people say "I don't like springsteen but I like tol"

― iatee, Monday, February 25, 2013 6:11 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbh this is mostly me. i like nebraska quite a bit, and then out of nowhere i started listening to tunnel of love obsessively, over the last year. that's my favorite now. "brilliant disguise" was the way in, but almost the entire album is very good. i do like a few other springsteen songs (no one is going to deny something like 'dancing in the dark') but in general i like when the e street band is either not there or they tone it down a little

I would like to distance myself from
the 2013 VG who all but dismissed Tunnel of Love in its entirety

https://tenor.com/wq8K.gif

i am here to say that i have revisited TOL since that time and love it start to finish. My ears, they seem to work now

https://media1.tenor.com/images/4c7118532426337f032fe0750baa43cb/tenor.gif

welcome to the fold

<3

Hooray!