The Superb Springsteen Album Far Too Many Overlook
A review and Rate-A-Record
Third place is nothing to scoff at. Third place in the Olympics gets you a bronze medal and betting on the horse that comes in third still wins you money. When you’re Bruce Springsteen, you can take comfort in the fact that even your third-best album is better than 90% of artists can ever hope to achieve.
Such is the case with Darkness on the Edge of Town, the 1978 album sandwiched neatly between 1975’s Born to Run (#1) and 1980’s The River (#2). It is without question a rock masterpiece yet is often overshadowed by both the album that preceded it and the one that followed it (and far, far too often by Born in the U.S.A., but that’s a discussion for another day). This needs to change, because whether you’re rolling down a deserted highway at 3 a.m. or sitting in a pitch-black room pondering where exactly your life went so wrong, there is no better soundtrack than Darkness on the Edge of Town.
That is not to say it’s sad bastard music; it’s not. It is, however, far more introspective than anything Springsteen had recorded up to that point. While songs like “Badlands” and “The Promised Land” felt like natural continuations of the songs on Born to Run, “Racing in the Street” and “Factory” gave us a preview of what we would hear on The River and Nebraska…
