(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Wed 13 August 2025 16:00, UK
No artist spends more than a few years in the business without having a handful of regrets.
Very few can have a perfect average whenever they walk into the studio, but even for someone as down-to-earth as Bruce Springsteen, he held himself up to a much higher standard than most when he finished a record.
As simple as some of The Boss’s best songs are, it was always about trying to make the best version of rock and roll that he could. That kind of emotion can’t be taught all that often, and when listening to the horror stories that went on during the Born to Run recording sessions, Springsteen was focused on recording music that sounded honest rather than the usual one-to-one recreation of their live show. There needed to be drama, but that was also a double-edged sword.
Springsteen may have liked the idea of seeing his name in flashing lights all the time, but the sudden fame and attention didn’t exactly get rid of his problems. He was still bound to have issues with his father, and even when turning into darker territory, he felt that there was a lot of ground that he had left uncovered.
You could argue that the reason why some of his dark records work is because of what isn’t there. There’s a desolate feeling that anyone would get listening to an album like Nebraska, but even if the E Street Band aren’t there, no one would be complaining, knowing that the frontman was telling some of the most heartbreaking stories of his entire career.
Right between the hits, though, Darkness on the Edge of Town is like a sad inverse of Born to Run. Springsteen’s masterpiece was a bold exploration of a bunch of kids who might have a shot at getting out of their nowhere town, but its follow-up feels like it’s being told from the perspective of all the kids that didn’t make it, forever lost in their small towns and wondering what kind of hell they can raise anymore.
While those stories need to be told just as much as the success stories, the singer admitted that he could have done it a lot better had he had the chance to go back, claiming, “There are some things that I want to re-record that I was unhappy with. The original studio recordings of the Darkness record. [That was] a record that I thought had the best of a certain type of songs. [It] had a lot of good ideas, but I always felt like it was a little bit dry recording-wise. We kind of underplayed and oversang, so that stuff sounds a little bit different.”
Springsteen is perfectly within his rights to think that the songs weren’t recorded properly, but his complaints are half of why the album has so much character. ‘Badlands’ is a bit rough around the edges, but it makes sense within the context of this musical setting, and as far as oversinging goes, ‘Adam Raised a Cain’ is still one of the greatest screams that Springsteen ever let out during his career.
So while Born to Run sounded a bit cleaner, Born in the USA was a bit catchier, and The Rising told a great story, Darkness on the Edge of Town is perfect for where it’s placed in Springsteen’s career. He had gone through the heights that most artists dream of, but nothing can prepare anyone for that first comedown from the top of the rock world.
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