Bruce Springsteen

Coming three long, litigation-filled years after Born to Run, Springsteen returned, bloodied but unbowed, with Darkness on the Edge of Town. Slightly worse for wear, the Boss' voice drips with bitterness as he sings about desperate, down-on-their-luck characters. Yet another classic, blue-collar offering from one of America's most gifted singer-songwriters.

For his fourth record, Bruce Springsteen cut off his beard -- and also shaved the shaggy
romantic epics of Born to Run. What emerged were ten taut rock songs about people
crushed by family, by lust, by living in this world every day. (He was so focused on the
theme of living with broken dreams, he left off "Fire" and "Because the Night," which
became hit singles for the Pointer Sisters and Patti Smith, respectively.) Despite it... More >

"Promised Land," "Badlands," and "Adam Raised a Cain" are models of how an unsophisticated genre can illuminate a mature, full-bodied philosophical insight. Lyrically and vocally, they move from casual to incantatory modes with breathtaking subtlety, jolting ordinary details into meaning. But many of the other songs remain local-color pieces, and at least two--"Something in the Night" and "Streets of Fire"--are overwrought, soggy, all but unlistenable. An important minor artist or a rather flawed and inconsistent major one. (Grade - B+)