Springsteen Challenge Day 11: Least Favorite Bruce Song

Yeah, this just got heavy in here.  You thought this was going to be thirty days of effusive praise for Mr. Bruce Springsteen.  Well, sometimes you’ve gotta crack a few eggs to make a Bruce omelette.  I’ve referenced, at least twice during this challenge, the Bruce song “The Angel” from the “Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ” album. I do not like “The Angel.”  Many people lump it in with “Mary, Queen of Arkansas” as a bad Springsteen song.  I’m not nuts about MQoA, but, to me, it’s listenable.  If picking a favorite lyric is difficult because there are so many, this is the opposite – picking my least favorite Bruce song from ones I dislike is easy, because there are so few. 

My iTunes has an autoplaylist that creates a list of all songs credited to an artist containing the word “Springsteen” so as to cover songs attributed to Bruce, or to “Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.”  I’ve been meticulous in rating every officially released song from the Bruce catalog that I have in my iTunes library. I sorted them by rating.  There are no one star songs. Of course there aren’t.  There are 7 two star songs, and one of them is a live, instrumental song (Paradise by the “C” from Live 1975-1985) which disqualifies it.  Going strictly studio on this one.

Two albums are represented twice on this ignominious list: Devils and Dust, and Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ.  That’s rough.  Additionally, of the other two songs, one is a deep cut off of the “Essentials” set, and another is a bonus track from the American Land edition of the Seeger Sessions.

The songs it ain’t:

-Paradise by the “C” – I mostly don’t like this song because it disrupts the flow of an otherwise flawless live set.  In my car, I just can’t get in to it, and in my office, even less so.  It’s like listening to hold music when calling your insurance company.  It’s vaguely familiar, probably Eddie Money’s “Two Tickets to Paradise” the muzak version, covered by Kenny G or Yanni, and a quicker tempo.  You don’t hate it, but, it’s not what you’re looking for.  It’s playing in the elevator to hell.

-Mary, Queen of Arkansas – This is a song I’m just never going to like, because it’s oddly placed on this album.  It could’ve fit on Nebraska, perhaps, or even better – the Ghost of Tom Joad.  But, on Greetings, it’s like Bruce wrote a song for a girl named Mary he wanted to nail.  Well, he probably did nail her.  He’s a handsome man.

-Countin’ on a Miracle (Acoustic) – this is the deep cut from The Essentials box set.  I didn’t particularly love the E Street Band version on the Rising album, and didn’t really ask for an acoustic version that rips all of the context and soul out of the song.  Plus, the bonus disc to the Essentials set is phenomenal, aside from this song!  Trapped, Held Up Without A Gun, None But The Brave, From Small Things… - this one is just a turd out there.  It can’t throw, it can’t hit.. it’s just a turd.

-All I’m Thinkin’ About – Bruce busts out the falsetto.  I actually kind of like the lyrics (the blind’ll see, the lame’ll be healed…), but I think it would sound better in that ragged, folksy swagger he uses for the rest of the Devils and Dust album.  I still don’t get why this needed to be a forced squeal of a falsetto song.  It’s like Bruce heard Bono’s falsetto and thought, “I can do that.”

-The Angel – NOT my least favorite Bruce song! This song is super pretentious.  It also doesn’t really make much sense.  I chalk this one up to a 23 year old writing a song that he thought would get him laid.  It happens. I will say, I like this one less than Mary, Queen of Arkansas (though, this list is in no way in order of dislike… it’s just “dislike it all”) because it couldn’t fit on any Bruce album.  He should’ve tossed this one in the trash.

-How Can I Keep From Singing? – I actually really like a lot of the Seeger Sessions extras from the American Land edition. I used to shout the “How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live?” song, along with “Bring ‘Em Home” and “American Land” – love ‘em all.  I even like “Buffalo Gals” – any song about Western New York prostitutes is a-ok in my book!  But, How Can I Keep From Singing?  It’s a friggin’ mess!  It’s like they were walking out of the studio, and Patti said, “Hey, Bruce!  You forgot to record “How Can I Keep From Singing?” and Bruce went, “Ah, jeez.  Uhh… alright, one take on this fucker.  Everyone, just… watch me and time it as best you can.” It’s jumbled, and all the voices singing over one another makes it hard to understand the lyrics.  I skip it regularly.  It’s the least played of all my two star Bruce songs (8 plays!)

Which leaves the other song from Devils and Dust that I thing is a total piece of crap, and the winner of the “Nate’s least favorite Bruce Song”:

-Silver Palomino – I thought this song sucked when I heard it, because I couldn’t understand a damn word of it.  Bruce took a simple, dusty ramble of a singing voice from the album, and turned it into this mumbly, drunken stupor for Silver Palomino.  It’s like Heath Ledger’s character from Brokeback Mountain sang it with a double shot of chewing tobacco in his lip. Plus, he uses the phrase “prickly pear,” which, I know is a phrase for a cactus.  But, to be clear, it’s a stupid phrase.  Plus, it’s about owning a horse.  That just does not fit with the rest of this album.  The only part about this song that I like is the lyric “her coat was frosted diamonds in the sallow moon’s glow” – or, at least, I THINK that’s what he said (I just checked brucespringsteen.net – that is the correct lyric.)  He also abandons meter, and rams “me and my dad” in before “had to blowtorch the thorns off the prickly pear” (stupid phrase!) as if it works.  It doesn’t.  Just because you speak it doesn’t mean it doesn’t count toward the meter, Bruce!  He could part out the better lyrics in this song to another song that doesn’t suck, and isn’t sung like Sling Blade five shots in.  But, other than that, I have no opinion on the song whatsoever.

Tomorrow’s post: Least Favorite Springsteen Album.  Like how I got all angry and self-righteous about Silver Palomino?  Imagine that for an entire album!