Five awful Bruce Springsteen songs you should never hear
“I want people to get the same experience from listening to one of my records as I had when I listened to Highway 61 Revisited,” said Bruce Springsteen when he was talking about how much of an inspiration Bob Dylan was to him, “The idea that something was revealed to them that was fundamentally true and essential, and gave you a view of your world, your country, your town, your neighbours, your family.”
This seems like an incredibly ambitious attitude to have as a songwriter. Not only did Springsteen want his music to sound good, but he also wanted it to be moving to the point that people listening discovered new things about themselves. Springsteen managed to achieve this, though, as songs like ‘The River’ and ‘Born To Run’ are laced with escapism and nostalgia, which is hard to come by.
Of course, when you have this ambitious approach to music, it is only natural that some songs you release fall short of the mark. After making music for decades and constantly pushing himself, Bruce Springsteen has released some of the best songs of all time and, predictably, some poor songs as well.
Here, we will take a moment to look at the latter as we discuss some of Springsteen’s worst songs which you should try to avoid at all costs.
Bruce Springsteen’s worst songs of all time:
‘The Way’
This song was deemed so bad that Springsteen tried incredibly hard to hide it so that as few fans as possible would hear it. When asked why he had put the track in a period of silence after another song, he was upfront about the fact that he hated ‘The Way’ and didn’t want anybody to hear it.
“The main reason it’s hidden is because I never liked it,” he said, “I would like to see it placed in a David Lynch film over a sexually perverse scene. That, to me, is its righteous home.”
‘Real Men’
A lot of the time, when men try to appear somewhat macho, it ends up making them look silly. This is exactly what happened with Bruce Springsteen and his track ‘Real Men’, which now sounds like the kind of rambling someone with a podcast and an agenda against women might spew out.
The song’s narrative involves the subject taking his date to see Rambo in a bid to show her what a real man looks like. Springsteen is so talented that even he might be able to make such a poor story come across as well-written, but he falls flat on this song, which is just poor through and through.
‘Mr Outside’
When you listen to some of Springsteen’s classics, such as ‘Born To Run’ and ‘Dancing In The Dark’, you hear full-bodied, well-put-together and incredibly meaningful songs. As a big fan of Bob Dylan, Springsteen wanted to write songs that moved fans in the way that Bob Dylan moved him. This is why it’s so surprising that he allowed a poor track like ‘Mr Outside’ to be released.
At only two minutes long, ‘Mr Outside’ is a half-formed idea that sounds unfinished and dull. It was likely released because content was needed for the box set that it was on, but that made for one of the worst Springsteen songs of all time.
‘This Is Your Sword’
Again, one of the things that makes so much of Springsteen’s music work is that it represents a clear idea of what the songwriter is trying to say. On albums such as Born In The USA and Nebraska, he sticks to specific themes and puts something together incredibly well.
This doesn’t happen on his album High Hopes, as the whole thing sounds like a haphazard mess. One of the songs where it’s clear that Springsteen didn’t have a clear idea when initially writing it is ‘This Is Your Sword’, which is a poorly put-together cliché with absolutely no sense of direction.
‘Red Headed Woman’
Springsteen started playing this track on his Joad tour. He said it was “a great song about a great subject: cunnilingus.” The song is terrible; there is no other way to put it. It comes across as cheap and slapstick and isn’t enjoyable to listen to.
It’s not unlike Bruce Springsteen to start playing some silly songs on tour that never actually get recorded. Tracks like ‘Pilgrim in the Temple of Love’ and ‘Sell It and They Will Come’ were played on tour to amused smiles, but Springsteen was always sensible enough never to bother recording and releasing them. Lord knows why he thought ‘Red Headed Woman’ was different, but it remains one of his worst tracks.
