The Best of Bruce Springsteen
The Musical Edison's Catalog Stripped to the Bone
It's almost impossible to reduce Bruce's best songs down to a mere dozen. Even his second dozen are better than almost anybody else's top tunes; not only that, the third dozen could only be rivaled by a few. Springsteen is practically the Edison of songs. His only peers and rivals in American history are Stephen Foster, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Jackson Browne.
Nevertheless, here are the Boss' best, the crème de la crème, the top (baker's) dozen:
Thunder Road
Dancing in the Dark
Darkness on the Edge of Town
Born to Run
No Surrender
This Hard Land
Factory
Independence Day
Janey Don't You Lose Heart
Racing in the Street
The Promised Land
The Rising
The River
Here are the top runners-up, ordered alphabetically:
4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy), Atlantic City, Backstreets, Badlands, Because the Night, Blinded by the Light, Brothers Under the Bridges, Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?, Glory Days, Fire, For You, Growin' Up, Hearts of Stone, I’m on Fire, If I Should Fall Behind, It's Hard to be a Saint in the City, Jungleland, Lion's Den, Lucky Town, My Hometown, Prove it All Night, Rosalita (Come Out Tonight), Spirit in the Night, The Ghost of Tom Joad, Tucson Train, Tunnel of Love, Two Hearts, Western Stars, Where the Bands Are.
Perhaps conspicuously absent is “Hungry Heart.” I never cared for that song, and since it was the first Springsteen song I’d heard by Springsteen (I’d heard Manfred Mann’s versions of “Blinded by the Light” and “Spirits in the Night”), I didn’t pay much attention to him until hearing the Born in the USA album, after which I backtracked to discover his older stuff.
