My Least Favorite Song from Every Springsteen Studio Album

God, this was hard to write

This is the article I’ve avoided writing since Christmas Eve. That was when I published a piece titled “My Favorite Deep Cuts from Every Springsteen Studio Album,” and from the moment I finished it the flip side of that record has been swirling in my brain: my least-favorite Bruce song on each album. It felt almost sacrilegious to actually put it down on paper, but a faith worth its salt should always be open to a little criticism.

Let me be clear up front, though. While the twenty songs listed here may be my least-favorite (especially the ones that should have been replaced with ones he left in the vault for years or decades before finally releasing them), they are still Springsteen songs. Much like pizza and blow jobs, even a “bad” Bruce song is better than no Bruce at all. Also, unlike previous articles there will be no playlist at the end of this one; I simply cannot bring myself to create one with this title.

Here are my least-favorite Springsteen songs from each of his twenty studio albums:

1. “Mary Queen of Arkansas” (Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.). Making this exercise a tough one right out of the gate, I don’t hate this song by any means, but it is the weakest on his otherwise stellar debut.

2. “New Yok City Serenade” (The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle). I’m cursing myself now for even starting this. This is easily Bruce’s most underrated album (Pierce McIntyre did a great review here), and all of the songs are excellent. I picked this one because it has a little too much going on toward the middle of its ten-minute span and because I just could not pick any of the others.

3. None (Born to Run). Nope, not going to do it. There is simply no way to call any song on the Greatest Album Ever my least favorite. You might say “just go with ‘Night’ or “Meeting Across the River’ and be done with it, to which I say repent of your sins. “Night” is a necessary transition between “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” and “Backstreets,” while “Meeting Across the River” is so good I wrote a short story about it.

4. “Adam Raised a Cain” (Darkness on the Edge of Town). It’s not a horrible song by any means, and includes some his trademark biblical imagery. But there are at least five outtakes from this album that are far superior: “Rendezvous,” “Hearts of Stone” (which he instead gave to Southside Johnny), “Fire” (given to the Pointer Sisters, “Because the Night” (given to Patti Smith), and “The Promise,” a direct follow-up to “Thunder Road” that’s one of the best songs he ever wrote.

5. “Crush On You” (The River). This is the first song I didn’t have to give any thought to, from Bruce’s second-greatest album. I’ve just never liked it, especially when it took a spot from “Where the Bands Are,” “Meet Me in the City,” “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come),” “Held Up Without a Gun,” and “Roulette,” ironically the first song recorded during The River sessions.

6. “State Trooper” (Nebraska). Again, not a bad song, though it’s a little odd that he put it immediately after “Highway Patrolman” on the album. The primal howl at the end wasn’t really necessary either.

7. “Glory Days” (Born in the USA). The easiest pick by far. My disdain for this song has shown up more than once in other articles, and it has not diminished with time. It’s a bad song, a worse video, and should have been replaced on the album with “None But the Brave,” “This Hard Land,” or “Janey Don’t You Lose Heart.” “Glory Days” reached #5 on the Billboard charts, while “Born to Run” peaked at #23; in the next life, God will exact his vengeance on record buyers for this travesty.

8. “Spare Parts” (Tunnel of Love). A sub-par song on perhaps the greatest divorce album ever. It simply doesn’t fit with an otherwise cohesive whole.

9. “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)” (Human Touch). This song is proof that Bruce didn’t have nearly enough Bruce-level material to release two albums, Human Touch and Lucky Town, on the same day. There’s enough on both for one killer record, but he was striking out in the world minus the E Street Band and clearly got overly ambitious.

10. “Souls of the Departed” (Lucky Town). This might have been a better song stripped down and placed on The Ghost of Tom Joad or Devils and Dust, or it may just be a case of how inferior his new band was to the E Street Band. Either way, it doesn’t work for me.

11. “Sinaloa Cowboys” (The Ghost of Tom Joad). My choice here is slightly biased by the fact that this is one of my least-favorite Bruce albums. Outside of the title track and “Youngstown,” few of songs stick in your memory like the ones on Nebraska.

12. “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day” (The Rising). Yes, the song has a catchy tune and good hook, but on an otherwise stellar album (featuring the return of the E Street Band) this is the one I’ll skip when listening in the car.

13. “Maria’s Bed” (Devils & Dust). Another album that I just don’t play that much, with some good songs and some I can simply do without; “Maria’s Bed” is definitely one of the latter.

14. “Shenandoah” (We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions). Having listened to this album repeatedly with my kids during a ten-hour road trip 15 years ago, it’s hard to choose my least favorite. But I made the choice to do this, so “Shenandoah” it is.

15. “You’ll Be Comin’ Down” (Magic). This might be my favorite song on this list of least favorites. The Magic album is criminally underappreciated, and that this is the worst one on it is proof of its greatness.

16. “Queen of the Supermarket” (Working on a Dream). Given that this list began with “Mary Queen of Arkansas,” maybe Bruce should avoid writing songs with “queen” in the title.

17. “Death to My Hometown” (Wrecking Ball). This song might have fit better during the Seeger Sessions Band period. It definitely does not work for me on this album.

18. “Down in the Hole” (High Hopes). If I’m completely honest, I have to admit High Hopes just isn’t a strong album, and “Down in the Hole” proves it. Again, I hate myself for ever starting this article.

19. “Hitch Hikin’” (Western Stars). The Western Stars album is Springsteen’s homage to the great country and western (mostly western) music of the 1960s and 1970s, which in itself makes it different from any of the others he’s recorded. I’m sure whatever song I chose would have offended Terry Barr, and am prepared for his wrath.

20. “One Minute You’re Here” (Letter to You). The Letter to You album has become one of my favorites during the eternal lockdown, so picking a least-favorite song is hard. Ironically, it’s the very first track on the album I’m most likely to skip.

There you have it: the list I didn’t want to do and will never, ever do again. I’m off to recite the lyrics to “Rosalita” 50 times while facing New Jersey as a penance, but cannot simply leave it like this, so here’s one that is absolutely not a least-favorite:

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