50 Years Burning Down the Road: Reviewing Every Springsteen Album From Worst to Best

Coming in at #13: Wrecking Ball

In 2009, Bruce Springsteen played the final shows in Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, before it was demolished in favor of building a new stadium (that sucks, but that is neither here nor there). He came out onstage and debuted a song that he wrote for the occasion called “Wrecking Ball.” I loved it, and I still think it is a great song, but it was a head-scratcher for me when he announced it as the title track to his 17th studio album, released three years later. However, when I listen to the album now, it makes sense.

Wrecking Ball came at a time of healing on many accounts. One account was the pain and struggle felt by millions of Americans as a result of war, economic recession, and natural disasters in the mid-and late 2000s. Many people lost their homes and their livelihoods. Even millionaire Bruce, the guy many people say “sold out” due to his extreme wealth, could still be the earnest voice of the American working class. Let me challenge you. If he is not, then who is? Bruce laments these hardships and serves the fans who, after The Rising, made Bruce well aware that they need him in times like this. Meanwhile, fans, Bruce, and the Rock and Roll world alike were also mourning a great big loss in Clarence “Big Man” Clemons. He brought energy, an infectious spirit, and powerful sax-playing that deeply moved all of us. Danny Federici also died recently as well in 2008. While the future of the E Street Band was unknown to fans, and I am sure Bruce as well, this record and the tour that followed let us know that it was all going to be okay. It took a five-piece horn section to step in for Clarence.

To put the past away, you must confront it first, and that is exactly what Wrecking Ball does. It is a prayer for those grieving and attempting to reconcile with all they have been through, and moving on with an injured soul. Wrecking Ball attempts to make it whole once again. It is an album that I like a lot more after listening attentively and writing this review.

Here’s the rundown:

Wrecking Ball begins with the track “We Take Care of Our Own.” Nearly 30 years after the release of “Born in the USA”, the song is still misinterpreted as a celebration and patriotic ode to the United States, but of course, it is a criticism of the United States and an angry anthem about the mistreatment of Vietnam War Veterans. “We Take Care of Our Own” takes a similar shape with a jingoistic title and triumphant chorus but in reality, it is steeped in irony. It details the government’s deliberate blindness to its citizens’ pain and suffering in wars and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. It is a great mission statement for the rest of the album, and it is the type of massive E Street Band stadium anthem we know and love. It is pretty irresistible in that sense. I love the drum intro and the riff that begins on electric guitar but is soon played by virtually every band member by the end of the song.

One of my favorite things about doing these reviews is returning to a song I had a bad impression of for whatever reason. That is “Easy Money” on Wrecking Ball. Bruce and his producer on this album, Ron Aniello, clearly threw in drum machines, stomp and holler-type rhythms, and other electronic experimentation on Wrecking Ball that did not translate. I do not know if this was an attempt to make the record sound more modern, but it totally misses the mark on many occasions. “Easy Money” is a prime example. The lyrics of “Easy Money” also elicit eye-rolls. “You put on your coat/I’ll put on my hat/You put out the dog/I’ll put out the cat” is not necessarily the clever lyricism that we associate with Bruce. Despite those elements, the song is pretty fun and harmless. The melody is catchy, and I like the blue-collar murder and robbery imagery that is supposed to reflect the same behavior and actions of the rich white-collar cretins. There is vigor in there, and as weak of a track as it may be in the Springsteen cannon, it certainly has heart.

I also have a negative perception of the next track, “Shackled and Drawn” only because the live versions on the Wrecking Ball Tour were like 10 minutes long and seemed to just go on and on with false endings and repetition. It became a chore to listen to, but the album version is perfect. It is an amazing song with great lyrics and a fun Irish folk and gospel hoedown. It once again exposes rich people becoming wealthier on the backs of the working class who are paying the cost physically, spiritually, and financially. “Gambling man rolls the dice/Working man pays the bills/It’s till fat and easy on banker’s hill.” The horn section and background vocals—major pieces of this album and tour—are well on display during this song.

Bruce has said in interviews over the last few years that being an adult is holding two completely contradictory ideas alive in your heart and your head. I think this concept represents Bruce’s songwriting in general, but certainly on Wrecking Ball. Wrecking Ball has themes of resistance, anger, and assertion that one day Americans will shed their hardships, and those who deserve to be punished and held accountable will meet justice. But, an idealistic view of a better future can be exhausting to picture, especially when the patterns of struggle and injustice never seem to cease. Bruce has always conveyed that feeling in his music also. The mission shifts from “How do we overcome?” to “How do we deal with it?” because there is rarely a responsible escape from the cycle of hard times that come as fast as they go away. “Jack of All Trades” is about a person in this very conundrum. The character in the song is using the handiness he’s learned throughout his life to work whatever manual jobs he needs to in order to make ends meet, while he reflects on the perpetuating cycle that he will never break free from in his lifetime. However, even if there is no reason to expect a working man’s salvation, it is human nature to maintain hope as a means of survival and wake up every single morning with a reason to go on. While I enjoy the song, I do not love the version on the album. The atmospheric production and Tom Morello guitar work do not fit what is a folk song at its core. Bruce played this at MetLife Stadium in 2016 with an acoustic guitar, harmonica, and string section, which I thought was magic.

The next track is fan-favorite “Death To My Hometown.” It is a late-career highlight with anger potent enough to start a revolution and perhaps match the political fury of the Magic album. I love how the lyrics casually conjure the horrific images of battlefields, airstrikes, and bombings to let the listener know that there are different forms of evil that Americans are fighting. It is not only violent wars against foreign enemies that are costing innocent lives. It is about the silent and deadly decimation of American lives caused by wealthy elites in our own United States who show no mercy in chewing up and spitting out the struggling working class to fatten their pockets. Read these lyrics: “Now get yourself a song to sing and sing it 'til you're done/Yeah, sing it hard and sing it well/Send the robber barons straight to hell/The greedy thieves who came around/And ate the flesh of everything they found/Whose crimes have gone unpunished now/Who walk the streets as free men now."I remember when we first listened to the album, my dad said “Jesus Christ” in reaction to that part’s ferocity. Bruce growls in between stadium-sized riffs and a massive stomp-clap beat that anchors the song. It is a catchy, Celtic folk-inspired, boisterous singalong that will remain a staple in Bruce’s legacy.

“This Depression” is one of the darkest confessionals of Bruce’s career. Bruce’s signature faith, which inspires the will to press on despite hard times is nowhere to be found in this song. Within the context of the album, a listener is inclined to think about economic devastation or the “depression” alluding to The Great Recession. However, the song can take on a double meaning, especially considering Bruce’s confession of the deep state of depression in which he found himself during his 60s and around the time he was writing Wrecking Ball. He mentioned that sometimes he could not even get out of bed in the morning, and how much his wife, Patti Scialfa, helped him during this time. I obviously will never know if this song is autobiographical and it does not really matter, but knowing what Bruce was going through, it sheds a different light on lyrics such as: “Now the morning sun is breaking/This is my confession/I need your heart/In this depression.” I, a certified Tom Morello hater, think Morello’s contributions to this song are very well done. This song sounds like nothing else in Bruce’s catalog and the distortion of the sustained guitar notes rattles around my head and puts me in that state of darkness. It is noisy and perhaps the closest Bruce has come to my other favorite band, Wilco. It is a song so honest and bleak that I cannot casually listen to it very often, like most other Bruce songs.

I do not have Wrecking Ball on vinyl, but to me, “This Depression” is a perfect end to side one, and “Wrecking Ball” is the perfect beginning to side two. I love it when albums are sequenced well. I agonize over it whenever I am ready to release an album of my own. It might be a lost art, but Wrecking Ball might be one of the best-sequenced Bruce albums.

All songs tend to take on multiple meanings over the years determined by people’s experiences with them or how the song makes them feel. That is the important meaning, much more than what the songwriter may be writing about. However, there are certain songs in Bruce’s catalog that we know were written for a specific reason, such as “My City of Ruins," a song about the collapse of Asbury Park, NJ, and “Wrecking Ball” which was written about the impending demolition of Giants Stadium. However, these types of songs have taken on greater meaning as we have sat with them throughout events in our lives that hearken us back to similar feelings we felt when we first heard them. “Wrecking Ball” has become an anthem for resilience, and it is a great song. The only problem with the recorded version is that there is no audience, and it is hard for the song to sound as lively as it is meant to sound without a crowd cheering, singing, or even just standing there. He literally sings, “Let me hear your voices call.” It is uninspiring and does not come close to offering what the previously released 2009 live version from Giants Stadium does.

“You’ve Got It” gets a lot of hate, and I honestly do not know why. It seems fun and harmless to me and adds some levity to an album that, truthfully, lacks lightheartedness lyrically. I think it is a nice piece of pop music, and I am a sucker for some slide guitar. I also like the vagueness of what “it” is. The song seems sexually charged, so maybe that is what it means, but even so, it is up in the air. I guess that is the point. “You can’t read it in a book/You can’t even dream it/Honey it ain’t got a name/You just know it when you see it.”

Then comes “Rocky Ground.” This is an example of another song that I remembered not quite liking, but it definitely grew on me when I listened to the album in preparation for my review. Still, I really cannot stand the “I’m a sooollllllldier!” chant throughout the song. It is a sample of an Alan Lomax recording called “I’m a Soldier In The Army of the Lord” and I understand why Bruce used it because it does go along with the religious overtones of the song, but I don’t think it fits the arrangement. It sounds jarring. Otherwise, despite not being the most religious person and sometimes feeling disconnected from the Christian elements that turn up in Bruce’s more contemporary writing, the religious metaphors in this song are powerful to me.

This is my interpretation: the shepherds in the song act as leaders and assume responsibility for their flock of sheep, which represent citizens. God is calling for the shepherds to tend to their flocks as a flood is coming to ravage the land. To me, the flood signifies all the hard times discussed throughout the album that had fallen on Americans, and the lack of leadership and aid that was forsaken by the people we thought were meant to protect us. Did I do well?

I did do a little research because I was fascinated by the line, “Jesus said the money changers in this temple will not stand.” It comes from a bible passage where Jesus journeyed to Jerusalem for his final Passover and banned the merchants and consumers from the temple as they turned a “house of prayer” into a “den of thieves.” Hmmmmm. I like the horns throughout the song. That horn passage sounds like rebirth and renewal. I usually do not like choirs in Rock and Roll, but it works here—maybe because this is more R&B and Gospel than Rock and Roll. Michelle Moore’s rap at the end bothered me when I first heard the album, just because it was something I had never heard in a Bruce song. I think it has aged pretty well. This is a lot of praise for a song I used to not like. Maybe it was because Bruce played it into Born to Run on the tour, and that transition made no sense.

The penultimate track is “Land of Hope and Dreams” which has been a fixture in Bruce’s live performances since 1999 on the Reunion Tour. Up until the release of Wrecking Ball, there was not a recorded version, and the definitive version was a live version on the live album Live in New York City from the final two shows of the Reunion Tour in 2000. Let me start by saying how much this song means to me (which also speaks to Bruce’s impact on my life from a very young age). The story goes that I would cry inconsolably in the witching hour as a baby. The only thing that would make me stop crying was when my dad held me and sang me this song. The Live in New York City version is an absolute masterpiece. The song on the tour was a work in progress from the beginning to the end, but by the end, it was a complete spiritual exercise in Rock and Roll. Max’s drum beat stays consistent and anchors the song. Bruce’s guitar intro is an arpeggiated A chord that, for some reason, feels like an uprising. Danny’s organ gives it the soul. Little Steven’s mandolin shimmers. Clarence’s saxophone blows the roof off the place.

Obviously, I love this song, which makes me so angry and upset about what they did to it on the record. Curtis King singing in the beginning with the choir is so corny and unnecessary. The pumped-in electric drums on the verses are abysmal, and Max’s drumbeat is no longer the heartbeat of the song. They piped in Clarence’s solo from the Live in New York City version, and the “People Get Ready” portion at the end is stupid. It is just randomly repeated, not like the ending he has done live since 2002. The recording is a travesty, and I try to do my best to pretend it does not exist. It is one big shame that Bruce allowed and enabled this song to be totally butchered, and for what reason? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and I live my life by that.

Thank God “Land of Hope and Dreams” does not close the album, or my last impression would be grief. Speaking of grief, “We Are Alive” is a fantastic closer. It is a wonderful tribute to American heroes and leaders in our history who have fought for peace and justice. It reminds us of our departed loved ones’ legacies and how they live on through the memories and admiration of the people they have left behind. The main riff in the song resembles Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” which I think is cool. It is by far the most hopeful and sweetest song on the album, and I really enjoyed it when I saw it live.

For many fans, Bruce’s 21st-century output can be hit or miss. However, I am confident that when all is said and done, Wrecking Ball will be regarded as a major statement in Bruce’s catalog. I like it a lot more now than I thought I did when I went into the review. I have my quips and criticisms as far as production, but lyrically, this album is very strong, with a few exceptions. If you are a Bruce fan and have not heard it in a while, give it a spin.