An Album You Should Own - 9/19/08

Bruce Springsteen - Darkness On The Edge Of Town

Three years after "Born To Run", Bruce Springsteen returned to tell the further adventures of "the losers" who hit the ground running on his breakthrough album with the 1978 release "Darkness On The Edge Of Town". It is an album that was critically applauded and universally loved by his fans. But, it is frequently forgotten when mentioning Springsteen's greatest works.

I have always thought of this album as the real beginning of Springsteen's narratives about the working class. With "Born To Run", Springsteen found his voice and the subjects that he would focus on for the better part of three decades. "Darkness On The Edge Of Town" is the second chapter in that long narrative. Where "Born To Run" saw the characters as teenagers yearning to breakout of the little town that held them back, "Darkness On The Edge Of Town" realizes those teens as young "twenty-somethings" hardened by the road and less sold on the notion that running will make all the worst things in their lives turn out right.

The production on "Darkness On The Edge Of Town" was more bare-knuckled than "Born To Run", but the playing was no less convincing and his songwriting was becoming more personal, subsequently more powerful.

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.

To this day, when I hear those words coming from the top of Springsteen's lungs, I struggle to understand how so many people live their lives "in the middle". It is a clarion call to everyone who realized that working only means that you have to work harder and the trappings of youth no longer provide an escape for the often sobering realities of adulthood.

I marvel at the empathy of a man who has never really lived that life, but manages to write so convincingly about it.

"Darkness On The Edge Of Town" wasn't ear-candy. It served notice to Springsteen's fans that he was willing to make his music more challenging if that's what it took to get his message across.

It is an album you should own.

Further listening: "Born To Run", "The River", "Nebraska", "Born In The USA", "Tunnel Of Love", "The Rising", "Devils & Dust", "Magic"