Favorite Springsteen Song

Candy's Room. I like this live video from 1978:

My favorite video, though, is also from 1978 -- Prove it All Night. However, on the studio versions, I prefer Candy's Room to Prove it All Night, but would have to choose the latter for the live guitar solos:

 

Kitty's Back

 

Lots of love for Born to Run, but it came out when I was in college, and to me, it's "young guy" music. I think the Nebraska songs are more timeless. I would have said "Mansion on the Hill" as my favorite Bruce song, but I'm not completely sure Bruce wrote it.

 

To me, Bruce is the perfect storyteller. I don't care as much about the music as I do about the lyrics. That being said, here is my current top 10.

1) Thunder Road -- the beginning of the song is simply perfect.

2) Incident -- his best "opera" song. So many great lyrics "Upstairs a band was playing and the singer was singing something about going home. She whispered Spanish Johnny you can leave me tonight, but just don't leave me alone." Man.

3a-b) The Promised Land/Badlands -- the two songs (along with the slightly inferior Darkness) where he finally boils down all of the wild imagery of the first 3 albums into what he's really thinking about.

5) Brilliant Disguise. You just don't live happily ever after.

6) Long Time Comin' -- anyone who has read these threads knows that I'm a huge fan of this song. Another song where basic beliefs are boiled down. The perfect song for those who had a bad childhood (everyone) and who want to do better for the next generation (ditto). "down below and pulling on my shirt, I've got some kids of my own. Well if I had one wish in this godforsaken world kids, it'd be that your mistakes would be your own. Yeah, your sins would be your own." The last two stanzas are the best lyrics he's written since the '70s.

7) Better Days. Never understood how this song wasn't a hit. "tonight I'm laying in your arms, carving lucky charms, out of these hard luck bones"

8) Jungleland

9) Shut Out the Light --Born in the USA was a very good song, and planted the seeds for songs like Youngstown. The more personal Shut Out the Light is just haunting.

10) Land of Hope and Dreams. A long, but logical trip from the car driving away in Thunder Road, to the communal train in LOHAD.

Five more songs which hit the right emotional notes for me:

-- Matamoros Banks
-- Wreck on the Highway
-- Stolen Car (Tracks version)
-- How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times
-- Long Walk Home
.

 

She's the One, Out in the Street, Prove it All Night, Badlands, about 25 others are loaded and ready on the iPod for my little trip to LAX in the morning, that's for sure. Can't go wrong with any Boss on a long flight.

 

The River

Jungleland
Wreck
Thunder Road
Darkness
Badlands

 

Hammersmith Odeon version of that one is a fucking freight train.

 

That's my favorite. I know some here might say it's overplayed, but it's a damn good song.

 

Any song that doesn't have his voice singing it!

 

Thunder Road
Johnny 99
Highway Patrolman
One Step Up
Sinaloa Cowboys

As always, subject to change depending on the day.

 

there are lots of times when I prefer to hear Born to Run played this way:

 

I'll add a vote for "Meeting Across the River"

"Tunnel of Love" and "Girls in Their Summer Clothes" come close.