Bruce Springsteen’s attempt at writing “the greatest rock ‘n’ roll record ever”
Bruce Springsteen is an ambitious songwriter who has always aimed to hit the highest heights. Even when he was a prominent figure in the New Jersey bar scene at the beginning of his recording career, Springsteen harboured goals to write songs seismic enough to fill stadiums and wasn’t prepared to settle for anything less.
While many artists share these same sky-high dreams of superstardom, very few are successful at achieving them. Manifestation alone isn’t enough to become a hugely successful artist, and the most important asset is the quality of the songs. Without that key ingredient, nothing else matters, and musicians can wave goodbye to their ambitions of becoming a household name.
With Springsteen, it was never the fame or the adulation that he most desired but the scale of the challenge. Although music is entirely subjective, with opinions differing from person to person, that didn’t deter Springsteen from setting himself the task of writing the greatest song in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.
While there’ll never be an objective winner regarding the aforementioned title, as a 24-year-old, he gave it his best shot and asserted his name in the conversation with ‘Born To Run’. At the time, Springsteen had already released two albums but had yet to fully establish himself despite having the backing of a major label.
If his third album followed the same path as his first two, Columbia would likely have thrown Springsteen on the scrap heap. Thankfully, ‘Born To Run’, the title track, changed the course of his career with one song and made him a star.
Years later, when Springsteen released his Greatest Hits album, the singer-songwriter revealed his mission statement when penning ‘Born To Run’. In the liner notes, he wrote: “My shot at the title. A 24 year old kid aimin’ at ‘The greatest rock ‘n roll record ever.'”
Furthermore, Springsteen once explained while on tour in 1988: “When I wrote it, I was 24 years old, sitting in my bedroom in Long Branch, New Jersey. When I think back, it surprises me how much I knew about what I wanted, because the questions I ask myself in this song, it seems I’ve been trying to find the answers to them ever since.”
“When I wrote this song, I was writing about a guy and a girl that wanted to run and keep on running, never come back. That was a nice, romantic idea, but I realised after I put all those people in all those cars, I was going to have to figure out someplace for them to go, and I realised in the end that individual freedom, when it’s not connected to some sort of community, can be pretty meaningless,” he continued.
‘Born To Run’ allowed Springsteen to realise his dreams, and to this day, it remains his trademark song, which has been with him on every step of his journey. The heartland classic achieved everything Springsteen set out to accomplish when he sat down on the edge of his bed to create it, and it will forever be bestowed in the rock ‘n’ roll history books.
