My Year of Bruce Springsteen, Part 1: Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.

A review of Bruce Springsteen’s debut album from 1973

As I wrote in this recent article of mine, one of my resolutions for 2022 is to listen to a lot of music, either old or new, that is brand new to me.

Two artists I’ve always liked a lot, even though I know primarily just their popular songs, are Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. Since I’m mostly unfamiliar with the majority of each of their studio albums, I decided to challenge myself to listen to and review all of them in 2022.

As I wrote in my first entry in my My Year Of Neil Young series, my self-imposed primary rule for reviewing albums that I’m unfamiliar with is that I must listen to each of them a minimum of three times before reviewing them.

For me, one time is nowhere near enough. There are just too many things going on in albums, especially great ones, to catch all of them on the very first listen. I think a minimum of three times is a fair number of listens in order to get a good, full grasp on an album — at least enough to give it a fair review.

I’ll be reviewing each of Neil’s and Bruce’s albums in the chronological order they were released.

Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., Bruce Springsteen’s first album, was released on January 5, 1973.

At that time, I was very, very young and I was still several years away from listening to rock and roll music. However, when I became a regular listener of it towards the end of the 1970s, it wasn’t long before I started hearing Bruce’s songs a lot on the radio — especially “Born To Run,” which may have been the first one I ever knew by Bruce. I loved it right away.

Actually, now that I think about it, that’s not entirely true. The first song I knew and loved that was written by Bruce Springsteen was “Blinded By The Light” — but I knew the incredibly popular version of it by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band that was released in 1976.

Bruce’s original version of the song was the first track on Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ. I first heard his version…hmmm….probably around 1990 or so. For the longest time, I felt that I preferred the remake by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, but my opinion has changed after listening to this album several times over the last week or so.

Blinded By The Light

I’m not going to say that one version is “better” than the other, but given the choice as to which one I’d rather listen to, I’d pick the original — in no small part because I’ve heard the other one approximately 7,432 times and I could stand a little break from it.

Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ is an amazing debut album. “Blinded By The Light” is just one of several songs that I love on it. My other favorites, in no particular order, are:

“Growin’ Up” — I’ve lived my entire life in northern Delaware, less than an hour away from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I first discovered “Growin’ Up” (and most of Bruce’s other songs) on 93.3 WMMR, a Philadelphia radio station. They played this song quite a bit when I was in my early teens and since I was “Growin’ Up” myself at the time, I instantly loved it. I still do.

(On a side note, the station also frequently played a very silly spoof of the song called “Throwin’ Up,” which my very immature teenage ears thought was hilarious.)

Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street? — I was completely unfamiliar with this very short song until just a week or so ago, but I loved it as soon as I heard it. While listening to it for my first time, I was blown away by the fantastic lyrics in it — especially because Bruce was only in his early 20s when he wrote them. Amazing.

The Angel — This is my favorite of the “slow” songs on the album. I can’t exactly tell you why, but I know that I like it a lot.

For You — This is another one that I heard a lot when I was a kid. I fell in love with it back then and I’m still in love with it now. What can I say? I’m a loyal kind of guy.

Spirit in the Night — I haven’t conducted a poll of every single music listener in the world (I just don’t have the time for that), but I think a lot of them would agree with me that this is an incredibly awesome song.

My least favorite songs on the album are probably “Mary Queen of Arkansas” and “Lost in the Flood.” They’re both perfectly fine, though. The lyrics in them are exceptional. However, the songs just don’t knock me out, in general. (No offense, Bruce.)

All in all, I think Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ is an outstanding album and I give it 4 out of 5 stars.