Bruce Springsteen Takes Me Into The Darkness
My Year of Bruce Springsteen, Part 4: My album review of ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’
Bruce Springsteen’s fourth album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, was released on June 2, 1978. I was only 12 years old at the time and I can’t remember if I even knew who Bruce Springsteen was back then. Even though I was listening to a lot of music in 1978, like most kids my age, I was very busy that year listening to the Grease and Saturday Night Fever soundtracks.
In 1980, probably around the time that Bruce’s album The River came out, I started to move away a little bit from Top 40 radio stations and ventured out to rock stations — including the legendary 93.3 WMMR in Philadelphia. This station was a very early supporter of Bruce Springsteen. They played his music well before a lot of other stations did and they helped him become a star. After he became famous, they continued to play both his hits, his non-hits, and rarities (like “The Fever”) on a very regular basis. You never had to wait very long to hear one of Bruce’s songs on WMMR back then.
It was there that I first heard and fell in love with a lot of the songs from the five Bruce Springsteen albums that had been released by 1980. However, there was one album from that period that never seemed to get as much airplay as the others — Darkness on the Edge of Town.
And that’s never seemed to change too much. Over the past 40-something years, the only songs from the album that I hear regularly on radio stations are “Badlands” and “Prove It All Night.” I’ll also occasionally hear “Candy’s Room,” but those times are very, very rare.
So, when I decided to do My Year of Bruce Springsteen this year and listen to every single one of Bruce’s albums, I was excited to finally hear more songs from Darkness on the Edge of Town. I listened to the album in its entirety for my first time just a couple of weeks ago.
My initial reaction was…well, I don’t want to make any of you Bruce fans hate me…but I wasn’t too crazy about the album at first. While I thought that some of the songs on it were exceptional, and most of the others were at least pretty good, Darkness on the Edge of Town wasn’t knocking me out on my first couple of listens — at least not as much as Bruce’s first three albums had knocked me out during the start of My Year of Bruce.
But I told myself that that (it always feels wrong when I use “that” twice in a row) may have been the problem. Maybe I needed a little bit of a break from Bruce’s music in order for Darkness to have a truly fair chance.
After all, only a day or so earlier, I’d been listening to the Born To Run album over and over and over again. I’d just discovered it, but I already thought it was one of the best albums I’d ever heard in my life. Was I not giving Darkness on the Edge of Town the chance it deserved because I was subconsciously comparing it to Born To Run? I thought maybe that was the case, so I waited several days before I returned to Darkness.
And it worked.
I played the album a couple more times and the songs started to sink into me more deeply. For example, when I had first tried the album, I thought that some of the songs, like “Adam Raised a Cain” and “Racing in the Street” were okay songs — but maybe a little bit on the boring side. However, after a few more listens, I grew to love both of them.
Adam Raised A Cain
This is now one of my Top 3 favorite songs on the album. My only “issue” with it is more my fault than Bruce’s fault. Whenever Bruce sings the word “Cain,” I instantly think of Jonathan Cain of the band Journey.
But, it’s not really an “issue,” because I’m a very big fan of both Jonathan Cain and Journey! So, hey, I get to have both Bruce Springsteen and Journey in my head while listening to this song. It’s a win/win for me!
Racing in the Street
This is an amazing song with wonderful lyrics and vocals. I also absolutely love the music in it.
While researching this song for this article, I discovered that Roger Taylor of Queen recorded his own version of “Racing in the Streets” on his solo album Strange Frontier. It’s much different than the original, but it’s pretty decent:
Here are two more of my favorites from the album:
Something in the Night
“Something in the Night” is another one that I wasn’t sure about at first. Honestly, I’m not sure why. Maybe I was initially turned off by Bruce’s moaning at the start of the song before the actual lyrics started. For whatever reason, I’ve always had problems with singers starting off songs that way.
Do you know very who rarely moans when he sings? Jonathan Cain of Journey.
Hi again, Jonathan!
Well, it looks like he wants me to move on, so I’ll go ahead and do that. Back to “Something in the Night…”
Over time, I grew to love Bruce’s passionate moaning.
Oh, that sounded far more erotic than I meant it to.
Sorry. Let me try again.
The moaning in the song is absolutely fine. Bruce was just feeling it, you know? I can dig that. It works and it fits in perfectly with the music in the song. In retrospect, I’m annoyed at myself for being annoyed by the moaning.
“Something in the Night” is now one of my Top 3 favorite songs on the album. The music and vocals in it are amazing.
This next one is currently my #1 favorite song on the album:
Candy’s Room
To me, “Candy’s Room” is the standout song on the album that is perfect in every way. It’s very short, but it’s wonderful. Bruce and The E Street Band rock and sound fantastic on it!
I like most of the rest of the songs on the album pretty equally— with two exceptions: “Factory” and “Streets of Fire.” They’re both pretty decent songs, but I’m just not crazy about them. Then again, knowing me, next week I’ll change my mind and those two will be my new favorite songs on the album.
I had to step away from my computer for an hour or so after I wrote that last paragraph. The entire hour I was away, the chorus of “Streets of Fire” was running through my head — and not in a bad way. It’s probably going to be playing in my head for the rest of the day.
So, yeah, I guess I like that song a lot now too.
Streets of Fire
It may have taken a little while to grow on me, but I now think that Darkness on the Edge of Town is an exceptional album. Out of 5 possible stars, I give it…drumroll, please…4 stars!!!
Here’s the album on Spotify:
If you’re interested (and even if you’re not), here are my other reviews of Bruce Springsteen’s albums:
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