Review Summary: For me, this is the Boss's best album. It's one of the most heart-wrenching and passionate albums I've ever heard and it's also where Bruce became a spokesman for the working class.
In 1975, Bruce Springsteen broke into the mainstream with his album, “Born to Run”. The album got him on the cover of Times and Newsweek magazines in the same week and even now, “Born to Run” is his second best-selling album (after “Born in the USA”). Most fans and critics consider it to be his magnum opus. I disagree however, as much as I love “Born to Run”; his 1978 follow-up “Darkness on the Edge of Town” is for me, his best album.
As most fans know, after “Born to Run” was released, Bruce got caught in a legal battle for creative freedom with his former manager, Mike Appel. Because of this, Bruce couldn’t release another album for 3 years which unfortunately meant that lots of the public had forgotten about him. But instead of admitting defeat, Bruce came back in 1978 with a masterpiece: “Darkness on the Edge of Town.”
It’s easy to see when listening to this album that Bruce had changed. The songs were bleaker and not optimistic anymore. Instead of singing happy songs about people escaping their hard lives, he dug deeper and sang about the hardships of the working class. It has some of his hardest rocking songs, and some of his most haunting ballads. Because of all this, “Darkness on the Edge of Town” remains as being one of the most passionate and emotional albums Bruce has ever released. Now let’s talk about the songs shall we?
The album begins with the opening drumbeats of “Badlands”. This song is absolutely amazing and it has so much energy behind it! It’s also one of Bruce’s best live songs ever, when he plays it live, he gets the whole crowd fist-pumping! On the surface, this song sounds like something that could have been on “Born to Run” ("We'll keep pushin' till it's understood and these badlands start treating us good”) but if you dig deeper, you can see that this reflects how Bruce was feeling during his legal battles (“got a head-on collision smashin' in my guts man” and “I’m caught in a crossfire that I don’t understand.") After the first couple of verses Bruce breaks into a guitar solo and the great Clarence Clemons (RIP Big Man) comes in with a sax solo. The bridge of the song starts quietly and builds and builds until Bruce explodes into the last chorus. It’s a brilliant song and easily one of the best songs on the album.
After “Badlands” has faded away, WHAM! The blistering lead guitar of “Adam Raised a Cain” hits you like a hammer. This song may be Bruce’s hardest rocker ever and it’s definitely one of his coolest songs. This song describes tensions between a father and a son and how a son inherits his father’s hardships and reputation. Bruce adds emotion into this song with some of his angriest singing ever and the lead guitar is excellent. This song also has great uses of biblical references (“In the Bible Cain slew Abel and East of Eden he was cast !”) Overall, this is an awesome song and one of the best and most memorable ones on the album.
Next, we hear the quiet opening chimes of “Something in the Night” which happens to be the first ballad on the album. Bruce’s wailing sets the mood for this song, which is about just wanting to escape the hardships of life (and “chase something in the night”). This is a theme that we can all relate to sometimes in life which makes the song even more special. After the second verse, Bruce is joined by many backing singers for the bridge, it almost sounds like a choir and it’s absolutely beautiful! The song ends with Bruce wailing (similar to the endings of “Backstreets” and “Jungleland” from the “Born to Run” album.) It’s a wonderful and heartbreaking song!
Now, after a slow and emotional ballad, what kind of song should be next on the album? A fast-paced exciting one of course! “Candy’s Room” does exactly that, it starts with light tapping on a cymbal and builds up until the drums, guitar, piano and glockenspiel come driving in. The song sounds like an adrenaline rush and it’s one of Bruce’s most exciting songs ever! The lyrics talk about longing for a woman, and this theme is perfectly portrayed through the excitement of the music. It also has one of Bruce’s best guitar solos ever. It may be a short song but it sure is great!
“Racing in the Streets” is often considered by fans as being one of the best songs Bruce ever wrote, and for a good reason too. This is one of his most haunting songs thanks to Bruce’s lyrics, Roy Bittan’s piano, and Danny Fedrici’s organ. The narrator of the song describes his how he and his friends have bad lives and the only joy they find is when they go racing in the streets at night. It seems as though the narrator is obsessed with racing, as it’s the only time in his life where he feels truly happy. For a while, it seems that this song has a similar theme to “Thunder Road” but halfway through the song, the narrator starts singing about his wife and how he met her in LA and drove her away. But now it seems as though their relationship is falling apart because the narrator is still obsessed with racing and his wife is dying inside (“She sits on the porch of her daddy's house, but all her pretty dreams are torn, she stares off alone into the night With the eyes of one who hates for just being born.”) It seems as if Bruce is looking in irony at the songs on "Born to Run". However, the last few lines do offer some hope- “Tonight my baby and me we're gonna ride to the sea and wash these sins off our hands.”
“The Promised Land” is my favorite Bruce Springsteen song ever. For me, this song sums up everything that Bruce is about. Its placement on the album is perfect, because it comes right after one of the most pessimistic songs on the album and brings some light into the darkness. Now don’t get me wrong, this is NOT a happy song. The narrator of the song describes how every day he tries to work his hardest and live a good life but it never pays off and he ends up on his knees (“but your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold, sometimes I feel so weak I just wanna explode”) he sometimes feels like he wants to “tear his whole town apart” but even after all of this he declares, “mister I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man, and I believe in the promised land!” After the second verse, Bruce comes back with another guitar solo and Clarence Clemons brings another one of his famous sax solos. The third verse may be my favorite part of the whole song, Bruce is joined by some beautiful haunting backing vocals and the lyrics are amazing – “There's a dark cloud rising on the desert floor, I've packed my bags and I'm headed straight through the storm, it's gonna be a twister that'll blow everything down that ain't got the faith to stand its ground. Blow away the dreams that tear you apart, blow away the dreams that break your heart, blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and broken hearted.” Those words blow ME away! This song is a masterpiece in every sense of the word! There’s something about that harmonica at the beginning, middle and end that just works so well!
Next we have “Factory” which is a short and simple song describing the hardships of the working class. The narrator describes watching his father go to the factories every single day through his window. The song also seems to imply that working in the factories all day messes with the worker’s heads and causes them to act violently (“End of the day, factory whistle cries, men walk through these gates with death in their eyes, and you just better believe, boy, somebody's gonna get hurt tonight.") I once heard that this was meant to be a tribute to Bruce’s father, but whether that’s true or not this song remains as being one of Bruce’s most touching and eye opening songs.
“Streets of Fire” could very well be the angriest and most hopeless song on the album. Unlike many of the other songs, this one doesn’t refer to any specific people or places. Instead, this song is about just being sick of everything in life and wanting to let it all go. The narrator in this song describes how he feels that everything in his life is closing in on him and tearing him apart (“and the weak lies and the cold walls you embrace eat at your insides and leave you face to face with streets of fire”). He feels as if he is at a dead end in his life and all he can see ahead of him are streets of fire. This song has another great guitar solo from Bruce and has some beautiful organ-playing. All in all, it’s a powerful and heart-wrenching song.
After the “Streets of Fire” has faded away, the opening notes of “Prove it all Night” come crashing in. This song is one of the catchiest songs on the album, but don’t let it fool you, this song has some dark undertones as well. At first glance this song seems like some sort of love song but as Bruce once said in an interview, the message of this song is “success requires sacrifice”. In this song, that theme is being applied to a relationship through lines such as “But if dreams came true, oh, wouldn't that be nice, but this ain't no dream we're living through tonight, girl, you want it, you take it, you pay the price.” This song also has an awesome and explosive sax solo from “The Big Man” and excellent piano playing from Roy Bittan. Originally this was the first single from the album and the only song from the album to make the top 40.
The closing song, “Darkness on the Edge of Town” is brilliant, and easily one of the best songs on the album. The song starts quietly, but then Bruce bursts into the chorus and brings possibly his most passionate and powerful singing ever! In this song, the narrator looks back at terrible events in his life (“I lost my money and I lost my wife”). He also implies that he has dark secrets and memories that tear him apart and burden him, but then he declares that he’s got to “cut it lose or let it drag him down.” Now he is faced with the unknown- the “darkness on the edge of town” and he must choose whether to face the unknown or to let his past tear him apart. The last chorus of this song sometimes sends shivers down my spine- “Tonight I'll be on that hill 'cause I can't stop, I'll be on that hill with everything I got, lives on the line where dreams are found and lost, I'll be there on time and I'll pay the cost, for wanting things that can only be found, in the darkness on the edge of town.” This last chorus seems to imply that the narrator has decided to enter the “darkness on the edge of town” and face the unknown. The song never says what happens to him, so I guess it leaves it up to the listener to decide. The song ends with some piano playing that slowly fades away and ends this masterpiece of an album.
