Greatest Hits. Just the title is enough to make most Bruce
Springsteen fans — not to mention music writers — groan.
Because, while he has scored some chart hits in a career now in
its fourth decade, Bruce Springsteen has never been a singles
artist. His albums are, with rare exceptions, carefully themed and
sequenced wholes that almost defy dissection. Hits are often flukes
for artists like Springsteen; you release singles because you have
to, not because it makes any artistic sense in the context of what
you’re doing.
Of course, there’s always the alternate approach utilized by
some other non-singles artists, of trying to assemble some sort of
“very best of” Springsteen — but this ain’t it. Not without
“Jungleland,” “Racing In The Streets,” “Tougher Than The Rest,” and
the list goes on.
You can see the dilemma right away in the choices that are made
here. “Brilliant Disguise” is surely the best track on
Tunnel of Love — hell, it’s one of the best songs he’s ever
written. But the title track charted higher, and isn’t here at all.
Huh?
The exclusion of the entire album
The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle is equally
puzzling, not to mention distressing. No “Rosalita”? Are you
serious? Moving down the timeline, no “Darkness On The Edge Of
Town”? No “Prove It All Night”? Say whaaaat?
This might be easier to take if this single-disc collection
actually stuck to its advertising. But the real crime is that
worthy cuts that actually tracked in the charts are tossed
overboard in favor of four new songs. I will grant you that the
four — “Secret Garden,” “Murder Incorporated,” “Blood Brothers”
and “This Hard Land” — are all respectable work and at the time
represented the first new Springsteen recordings to feature the E
Street Band in eight years. But they do not match up to the quality
level established by the rest of the album and don’t belong on a
disc that aspires to this one’s title.
Equally questionable — given the many charting songs excluded
from this package — is the inclusion of four cuts from
Born In The USA. The title track, yes, of course, and
“Dancing In The Dark” was the man’s biggest hit single ever. But
“My Hometown” and “Glory Days” are tough sells occupying space that
could have gone to any of the aforementioned glaring omissions from
this album.
In its own way, 18 songs on a single disc constitutes an
impressive value, and as an introductory purchase for a beginner,
this package isn’t bad. You do get a bunch of key songs like “Born
To Run” and “Badlands,” after all, not to mention the first album
appearance of “Streets Of Philadelphia,” and in the liner notes,
Springsteen’s entertaining annotations of each of the songs
represented here.
But whatever this album actually is, it’s not Bruce
Springsteen’s very best, or even his biggest hits, let alone his
Greatest.
