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

Coming in at #6: Tunnel of Love

Before you dive in and appreciate Tunnel of Love, you have to think about the album and tour that preceded it. Born in the USA had sold 12 million copies and the Born in the USA tour saw Bruce and the E Street Band filling stadiums around the world. His stardom and success in 1985 had been and has continued to be paralleled by few in the music industry. Everything that Bruce and the band had built over ten years had exploded; the size of the audience, the sound of the band, the power of Bruce’s voice, the anthemic songwriting, and even Bruce himself as he typically clad a sleeveless shirt that exposed his huge, newly-developed muscles. In all their glory, it felt like the E Street Band’s growth stunted after the tour because of how high they fully peaked. Oh, and Bruce was rich as hell. Did it make sense for him to get back into the studio and record another batch of working-class heartland rock tunes with the E Street Band? While 1987’s Tunnel of Love was a zag, it was an unsurprising one, unlike Nebraska which was a unexpected left turn after The River. It seemed like a natural progression for Bruce to peel it all back even from his fans’ perspective. I think the common question between fans and Bruce himself was “Who is Bruce Springsteen?” Even if Tunnel of Love conceptually seemed like a logical next step, what is surprising was how candidly and honestly Bruce tried to answer the question and in doing so, invited the audience to look inward at themselves alongside of him. By the end of the album, we have exhausted ourselves with soul-searching and accepting the darkness of what we have inevitably found. It may be Bruce’s most empathetic album touching on the lifeblood of human connection and delving so deep into his psyche, that we feel closer to him despite his transcendence into rock godliness. It is a brave piece of art.

Tunnel of Love has aged incredibly well. Sonically the instrumentation holds up with the lush synthesizers, icy electric guitar leads, and barebones percussion sometimes programmed on a drum machine and sometimes played by Max Weinberg. I do not think it would be accurate to call it a rock album, more than a pop/singer-songwriter album, and frankly a true solo album as none of the songs were recorded live and the actual E Street Band is used sparingly. It sounds like 1987, but it exhibits all of what made that era of music compelling. He could have fallen into traps such as big gated drums, reverb-drenched vocals, hair metal guitars, and other late 80s cheese, but that is not the case.

There are also cases in which this album was ahead of its time. The introspection in the lyrics and the bedroom-style production has undoubtedly given way to the moody “indie pop” genre. I am not sure there could be a Clairo or even a Billie Eilish if it were not for Tunnel of Love. Meanwhile, one of my favorite facts to tell people who need convincing as to why Bruce Springsteen is an awesome human being, is that he was the first artist to feature gay and lesbian couples in a music video with “Tougher Than the Rest.” This was the 80s, mind you, where homophobia was notoriously rampant. That takes courage and conviction to go out on a limb like that as one of the biggest stars in the world.

Here’s the Rundown:

Little Steven and Bruce had one of their most hostile disagreements about the inclusion of “Ain’t Got You” on Tunnel of Love. Bruce sings over a Bo Diddley beat of muted acoustic guitar scratches about all his fame and fortune. He has all the material things and all the admiration in the world except he is still unsatisfied because he does not have the woman of his dreams—a cute attempt at conveying a message that love is the meaning of life. Little Steven hated the song and felt no one wanted to hear about Bruce’s fame and fortune. It was distasteful and not relatable to his audience despite Bruce’s desperation in the lyrics to humanize himself, which the rest of the album does so naturally. Bruce loved the song. Little Steven was right. Do not get me wrong, the song is tongue-in-cheek and should not be taken so seriously, but with the rest of the album having so much depth, why does the listener even need it? If anything, it trivializes the rest of the album. I have mentioned in past reviews Bruce’s knack for providing levity in a tracklist that can get dark and contemplative. However, this “levity” is the first thing you hear when you put on the record and honestly, it is just not that good of a song to begin with. It should not have been included. The one glaring error that Bruce made with this album was not putting the title track first. Not to get on my soapbox, but I think “Tunnel of Love” seems like the obvious opener. Not only is it the title track, but it sets the scene and marks the origin of the rest of the songs. It introduces the tunnel of love metaphor and the rest of the songs are moments on that ride.

“Tougher Than The Rest” is a great starting point. Buddy Holly famously wrote “It’s So Easy!”, a song many artists have covered over the years. The refrain of that song is “It’s so easy to fall in love.” Decades of popular music have dramatically romanticized love and heartbreak, detaching those themes from reality. Bruce refreshingly rejects that idealism on “Tougher Than The Rest”, the least romantic love song of all time. The song is centered around two people battered by their past relationships but becoming wiser on the other side. Bruce dismisses decades of pop music when he sings, “So somebody ran out, left somebody’s heart in a mess, well if you’re rough and ready for love, honey I am tougher than the rest.” I love how unclear it is which person in the song was betrayed as if betrayal is such a fact of life that it is not even worth mentioning. Many songwriters have written entire songs and even albums about the situation that Bruce brushes over in one line. The reason that “Tougher Than The Rest” is so unromantic is because the two people in the song are settling for each other deceived by their expectations of what love is supposed to feel like and their “dream partner”; the handsome Dans, the good-looking Joes. These two adults understand the hard work and resiliency that love requires; the idea that you get what you can get. It is so bleak that it is beautiful and effectively sweeter than any love song Frank Sinatra could croon. “The road is dark, it’s a thin thin line, but I want you to know I’ll walk it for you any time.”

The arrangement is simple. It is anchored by rocksteady quarter notes played on the kick drum and snare. The ethereal synthesizer soars over the rhythm of the acoustic guitar. My favorite part is the guitar solo. It just mimics the vocal melody but the twangy tone on Bruce’s guitar cuts through the mix to pound you in the chest. The harmonica solo is the song’s climax and diffuses all the tension the production builds in the verses and choruses. Bruce’s ambient vocal sounds like it is coming through a dream with plenty of reverb and delay. The mix is excellent. On another note, Bruce performs this song differently live and in the studio, which I honestly had to listen to the studio and live versions back-to-back to realize after all of these years. After the guitar solo, Bruce sings the bridge again live while the studio version goes directly from the guitar solo to the last verse. I personally like the studio version better. The bridge does its job before the solo and defuses the listener’s anxiousness to hear the final bit of persuasion that Bruce offers the woman in the song.

It is funny that what follows “Tougher Than the Rest” is a gushy love song in “All That Heaven Will Allow.” This song is based on the easy, carefree nature of being in love that “Tougher” rejects. Bruce sings “Well, rain and storm and dark skies, well now they don’t mean a thing, if you’ve got a girl that loves you and wants to wear your ring.” Somewhere underneath it all, you can get the sense that Bruce wants to believe in the heaven he describes, but does not. Naivety can be a warm feeling, but the rest of the album tells us that Bruce is only trying to comfort himself with it for a moment as the darker moments on the album show that love is not a healer of all of life’s problems—in fact, it can complicate them even further. Bruce does a lot with a little production-wise on this song again. It is centered around his signature percussive acoustic guitar strumming that shows up often both live and in the studio. I love the actual percussion on this song too—especially the woodblock.

The reason that Tunnel of Love is so high up in my list of favorite Bruce Springsteen albums is the storytelling—a feature that is most riveting in Bruce’s less collaborative albums. At its best, it can make up for the righteousness of the E Street Band. “Spare Parts” is nearly the best of both worlds as it is the hardest-hitting rock song on the album with contributions from Danny Federici on organ and Garry Tallent whose brilliant bassline is the song’s musical foundation. However, as a listener I find myself hanging on Bruce’s every line so much so that I had to give it a few listens to hear all the instrumentation. Bruce explained in the introduction to the song on the Tunnel of Love Express Tour that it was about a woman reckoning with her own individual existence and putting the past away to go on looking for a new sense of purpose. Sometimes our first human instinct is to run from our problems, which rarely leads to peace and resolution. It will always remain if you do not face it. Fear is an essential theme at the core of Tunnel of Love: fear of stability, fear of commitment, fear of accessing one’s deepest vulnerabilities, fear of facing the past, and fear of facing the future. Bobby runs away to South Texas after impregnating and almost marrying Janey. He vows to never return to the life he ran away from after hearing about his son being born; his story aptly ends there. Meanwhile, Janey cares for her son, although he symbolizes her dark past and the unprecendent curtailing of her youth. She almost runs from it by letting the river drown her child, but she carries him home then pawns her engagement ring and wedding dress to set herself free. The reason this story is so resonant is because it is so familiar to the listener to the extent that we empathize with Bobby and Janey and understand the human nature that led to Bobby running away and Janey almost drowning her baby regardless of its darkness and depravity. It is an invitation from Bruce to the listener and himself to feel others’ pain and walk a mile in Bobby and Janey’s shoes. It is a prompt for self-discovery and determination to healthily search for our own identities and, as Bruce would write decades later, “who we are, what we’ll do, and what we won’t”.

Aside from my suggestion that “Tunnel of Love” should have opened the album, the rest of the album’s sequencing is spot-on. The loudness of “Spare Parts” leading into the quiet acoustic guitar-driven “Cautious Man” musically represents the duality of man that Bruce sings about in the song. It is hard for me to pick a favorite song on any of Bruce’s albums, let alone Tunnel of Love, but I can say “Cautious Man” always floats around the top. This song has a level of craftsmanship in its composition that I greatly admire and aspire to in my own songwriting. The listener hears what we think is a predictable and familiar folk melody that sounds like it could have easily been on Nebraska. Every so often, Bruce throws in a slight deviation of melody that keeps the listener upright and attentive. It is the type of device that is only effective when used sparingly. If you listen to the song, it happens when Bruce sings “it was there in her arms he let his cautiousness slip away” and “just as the words tattooed 'cross his knuckles he knew would always remain”.

Bruce is credited with playing every instrument as the arrangement consists of only Bruce’s voice, acoustic guitar, mandolin, and synthesizer pads. This makes sense for this song because it is not only one of the more solitary stories on the album, as Bill Horton is quietly fighting inner demons establishing a distance between him and his partner, but it is also as autobiographical as Bruce’s writing gets. The state of his relationship hinges on how well he can balance love and fear, the two words tattooed symbolically across his knuckles in the song. The idea of cautiousness derives from the aspect of fear as it acts as a guard for Bill, preventing people from knowing him intimately, a mechanism only necessary if you do not quite know yourself. Bruce has said that in his early life, he had to learn to love and to be loved. He also admits he was not a good husband to his first wife, Julianne Phillips, as he was afraid to be bonded to another person as a unit and lose all accounts of anonymity. He got married because he thought he needed to. He thought it would put his spirit at ease. At the end of the song, Bill feels an urge to run away, but when he sees that the road has no solution to his restlessness, he decides to go back to his wife, manage and let love win the battle; at least for the night.

Bruce has written countless songs about his father in his career. In most of them, he is at odds with his father and there is a deep communication gap and misunderstanding between them. “Independence Day” of The River is the quintessential song that describes their relationship. On The River Tour of 2016, Bruce spoke in the introduction to “Independence Day” about when he reached the age when people start to understand that their parents are human beings who have their own dreams and aspirations which parenthood can tend to postpone or cancel. While Bruce wrote empathetically about his father and understood why he struggled so much in life, he rarely expressed how much he looked up to him despite his demons until “Walk Like a Man” on Tunnel of Love. Bruce had no opportunity to wear his father’s shoes until he got married and transitioned into domestic life where he now understood the fortitude and maturity required by marriage. He sings “I was young and I didn’t know what to do, when I saw your best steps stolen away from you.” Bruce took from his father the man he aspired to be and the qualities he determined not to bring with him into the next chapter of his life. He fully realizes what he sang seven years prior: “I guess that we were just too much of the same kind.”

The first verse of “Walk Like a Man” always moves me as I think about my father and how much I look up to him. The line “all I can remember is being five years old walking behind you at the beach tracing your footprints in the sand, trying to walk like a man.” I can so clearly visualize the picture that Bruce is painting. The sweetness of it reminded his audience up to that point that while he and his father’s relationship was dysfunctional, he still loved him and he was still his dad. Meanwhile, it is up to Bruce individually not to fuck up the good thing he has in marriage, and while his father can be a guide, there is a great deal that Bruce can only learn by himself through his own experience.

The music is in line with the rest of the tracklist featuring acoustic guitar, synthesizers, and a steady quarter-note beat from Max Weinberg. My favorite musical moment of the album is after Bruce sings “I remember Ma dragging me and my sister up the street to the church whenever she heard those wedding bells” and the synth bells go “doo doo doo doo.” Listen for it, you will know exactly what I am talking about. I also love the way Bruce sings this song. It reminds me of how much his vocals evolved and transformed in just the first 15 years of his career. His voice sounds mature and effortless on “Walk Like a Man”, not trying to impress anyone or dramatize his delivery. He plays it completely straight, and while it is still unmistakably Bruce Springsteen singing the song, he sounds like a completely different singer from the one in the 70s. The way Bruce has been able to alter his voice to fit the material is often unappreciated, but “Walk Like a Man” is a great example of how dead-on he can be.

To my chagrin, “Tunnel of Love” opens side two instead of side one, but at least it gets a prominent spot in the tracklist, even if it does not feel that way without going over to a turntable and flipping the vinyl. The song is essential Bruce Springsteen listening, and it would be on a list of 20 or so songs that you would give to a newbie for them to get a feel for his music and writing. “Tunnel of Love” is one of the best metaphors throughout Bruce’s career, so much so that it seems obvious. The amusement park ride symbolizes the complicated highs and lows of marriage and surviving the dark parts of the journey. It is a simple and accessible premise, but Bruce drops numerous profound lyrical gems. My favorite is “The house is haunted and the ride gets rough, you got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above.” It is the thesis statement of an album that throws at you all of the difficulties of love and life that can be paralyzing if you do not have the tools to cope with it. Over the course of the tracklist, we sit side-by-side with Bruce as both of us try to work it out. “Tunnel of Love” crystallizes this message and catalyzes the candid and vulnerable soul searching that the album's back half puts us through.

The lyrics are half of what makes this song prominent in Bruce’s career. The other half is that Bruce takes us on this journey in the form of a brilliant pop song. I do not understand how this song was not a bigger hit, and why Bruce tends to ignore it when he plays live with the E Street Band. Max Weinberg is once again on drums for this song and lays down a punchy danceable beat. Sound effects whip and whirl beside Roy Bittan’s carnival-sounding synth parts as Bruce’s acoustic guitar accentuates the rhythm. The arrangement matches the thrill of the amusement park ride that Bruce is singing about. In the middle, you get Nils Lofgren’s greatest contribution to a Bruce Springsteen song with an iconic guitar solo. His smooth tone and guitar calisthenics fit perfectly. Bruce is usually the person I want to hear playing guitar on Bruce Springsteen songs, but in this situation, it was wise to delegate to Nils. You know a guitar solo is good when you can sing it, and that is what is happening in my head as I write this.

“Two Faces” is a song that has always deeply moved me. It also hovers at the top of my favorite songs on Tunnel of Love. I actually never thought much of it until a few years ago, when I was coming of age and beginning to understand the humanity of making a mistake, especially a mistake that you knew better than to make. It is difficult to reconcile with the wise part of your psyche when you do something to betray your trust in yourself and your values. Having the reflection and inner dialogue to diagnose this condition and admit to yourself that you do not approve of your behavior is difficult, so I can not imagine how difficult it is to have that conflict playing out publicly in real-time as art—in the form of a pop song. Whether it is bipolar disorder, another mental illness, or maybe just the human condition, Bruce is singing about a demon within himself that threatens the deep love he has for a partner. He tries to wish the destructive parts of his personality away, only to find that they will never go anywhere, he just has to commit himself to dealing with them. The songwriting genius of Bruce Springsteen lies in the fact that this theme is extremely complex and dead serious, but Bruce can communicate it so accessibly in the simplicity of his lyrics which invites the listener to fill the space. It is not a monologue or diatribe.

Similar to the moment in “Walk Like a Man” when the bells chime after Bruce sings about wedding bells, there are a couple of great moments in “Two Faces” where a lyric cues a punctuating lick. “Two Faces” starts with just Bruce’s voice and acoustic guitar. Then, bass and percussion come in. Then, when Bruce sings “then dark clouds go rolling by” a dark and ominous synth bad drapes itself over the arrangement. Bruce also sings “goodbye” and another elegant synth is layered. “Two Faces” also has some of the strangest sounds on a Bruce Springsteen album. The fuzzy guitar solo in the middle with the phaser effect is certainly not how we are used to hearing a guitar on a Bruce album. The synth organ at the end that plays the melody until the song fades out is also quite strange. I respect the experimentation, and it reminds me of something that would be on a song by The Killers in the present day.

While “Two Faces” diagnoses and explains an identity crisis, “Brilliant Disguise” illustrates how it alienating it feels when you stew in it. “Brilliant Disguise” is a song so forthright in its message, that it feels redundant to break down. However, the imposter syndrome Bruce sings about is something that I often deal with and frankly, something that even the best of us get caught up in. Anxiety and doubt fog up your view of your surroundings and your understanding of who you are. In the first half of the song, Bruce projects this condition onto his lover and wonders if the person he loves is genuine because how could a person this wonderful truly love him for who he is? It is a feeling that if unchecked, can and will ruin a relationship. Bruce sings “Now look at me baby, struggling to do everything right, but when it all falls apart and out go the lights, I’m just a lonely pilgrim I walk this world in wealth, I wanna know if it’s you I don’t trust, ‘cause I damn sure don’t trust myself.” Despite the companionship, Bruce’s fear renders him alone. He is living entirely inside his head. Once again, don’t we all struggle with that a little? It is usually something we reckon with ourselves or speak to a therapist about or at worst, deal with it in an unhealthy matter be it substance abuse or any other kind of abuse. Bruce deals with it by writing a pop single, which is why we as fans feel so close to him; and why there is so much trust between us. Songs like “Brilliant Disguise” are the reason why we stick with him; he proves he understands us by inviting us to understand him.

“Brilliant Disguise” is the closest we get to an E Street Band song on “Tunnel of Love.” Max Weinberg anchors a steady backbeat, recognizable from the first bar. This is the only song on the album where we hear real acoustic piano from Roy Bittan and organ from Danny Federici. Go figure, Bruce has played Brilliant Disguise live with the band more than any other song on the album.

It has been a pleasure to write all of these Bruce Springsteen album reviews and devote myself to sinking into these albums one by one. It is funny to deliberately examine music that has been in my heart and played a key role in my life for as long as I can remember. It is a different listening experience, but it is rewarding. I feel this way, especially with Tunnel of Love. With “One Step Up”, it is starting to hit me that side B of this album is the most emotionally raw, honest, dark, and pitiful group of songs in Bruce’s entire discography. The album’s first half is tongue-in-cheek at times, extremely hopeful, and empowering despite its depth and darkness. Side two is just depth and darkness; plain and simple. It is fascinating. Dave Marsh, well-known writer and Bruce Springsteen biographer, calls “One Step Up” “as miserable a cheating song as even Nashville ever knew.” He is dead on with that. Bruce describes his failing marriage; and how he and his wife are just going through the motions. The marriage’s furnace is not burning, the marriage’s engine is not turning. The birds are not singing. The church bells are not ringing. The metaphors are so illustrative. Bruce refers to their relationship as a “dirty little war” where the fighting has fully swallowed the love and passion that marriage is meant to promise, and Bruce admits that it is because he has not been a good partner. He progresses and then backslides as the song’s title alludes.

Bruce wanders into a bar and picks up signals from a woman across from him. His description of her is perhaps the album’s most sinister line: “She ain’t lookin’ too married, and me well honey I’m pretending.” It is painful to hear Bruce refer to his marriage as an act and declare it not an emotional or moral barrier to keep him from pursuing this woman. For the rest of the album up until this point, Bruce is trying, but now, he has given up. It is ironic that Patti Scialfa contributes background vocals to this song because she could easily represent the woman at the bar who Bruce is singing about. Nonetheless, her contributions are impactful and a clear exhibit of how much chemistry there is between her and Bruce vocally, and how wonderful it can sound when the song calls for it. Bruce plays everything else by himself. The guitar on this track is beautiful from the arpeggio on the acoustic guitar in the main motif and the strange chorusy electric guitar flourishes throughout.

“When You’re Alone” holds the most direct message, unblanketed by the romantic metaphors Bruce uses to illustrate the theme in many of the album’s other songs. Bruce describes a relationship falling apart despite the love the two have for each other and the desperate act (similar to the same old act in “One Step Up”) he inhabits to make the marriage feel real is snuffed out. His partner leaves him as “love was not enough”, the life of the relationship necessitated more than that. Bruce spends the rest of the song insisting on himself and warning his partner that when you are alone (single) you are alone (lonely). The second verse calls forth a theme from “Cautious Man” which is the instinct to run—a topic thoroughly exhibited in another little Bruce Springsteen album released in 1975. In “When You’re Alone”, running away is a temporary fix to a long-term problem and somewhere along the line you find that life on the road can grow despondent. Eventually, you want to seek comfort in stability— a loving companion to get you through the night. The last verse shows how distance and time can make the heart grow fonder and the bad times slip away from your mind. Bruce dispels the potential bitterness of the message echoed throughout the song, forecasting depression and desolation for the person who left him. He clarifies “Well it ain't hard feelings or nothing sugar, that’s not what’s got me singing this song, it’s just nobody knows, honey, where love goes, but when it goes, it’s gone gone.” That part always moved me. I think it is true that people often cultivate hard feelings on purpose when a relationship ends because it is easier to feel and process than to accept love fading away because it was not properly tended to. That puts the responsibility on both sides and forces reflection, rather than feeling resentful for a convenient but false explanation of how it all came apart.

Earlier in my review, I talked about how “Tougher Than the Rest” is the least romantic love song of all time. “Valentine’s Day” makes up for that. It brings some clarity and closure to Tunnel of Love where the purity of love is brought forth. On “Tougher Than the Rest” love is a mechanism of healing battered souls. On “Tunnel of Love” love is a tumultuous, unpredictable journey. “All That Heaven Will Allow” is perhaps a introduction to the passion and intensity that “Valentine’s Day” captures. Bruce sets a scene of a man rushing down the highway with his heart pounding with adrenaline in a situation similar to “Downbound Train” where a man frantically sprints to return to an estranged lover. Bruce sings about speaking to a friend who recently became a father and how having a child elevated his soul and injected him with purpose, willpower, and beauty. Bruce realizes the power of love and domesticity, despite not having a child. He realizes how barren his life feels after speaking with his friend and he does not want to wait one more second to reembrace a part of his life which he neglected. Bruce details a dream where he is on the brink of death and as he feels his lover in the form of God’s light. All the broken dreams, promises, and hardships at every corner of his life have been overtaken by love. “Valentine’s Day” is the summation of a tracklist that desperately tries to dispel worry, pain, and brokenheartedness in search of comfort, stability, and contentment. While Bruce refers to this person as his “lonely Valentine” which illustrates emotional and proximal distance, Bruce seems to hit on the feeling he is looking for by the end of “Valentine’s Day.”

“Valentine’s Day” is a personal favorite of mine as I love a Bruce song without a chorus especially in an era of Bruce’s writing where the vast majority of songs have one. This song has stuck out to me because of its stream of consciousness. Bruce’s voice does not deviate from the middle part of his range and the lyrics and vocal performance sound conversational. He sings over a dreary waltz grounded by a steady bassline that makes this dirgey instrumental ironically danceable. However, I would be remiss if I did not mention the version that Bruce did solo piano on the Devils and Dust Tour. There is a recording of it from Columbus on Spotify and I urge you to go now and stream it. It is one of Bruce’s best performances in his entire career. My favorite part is how raw it is. Bruce’s piano playing is characteristically dynamic yet sloppy and perfectly adds extra emotion to the song. The way the entire song builds up for a harmonica solo at the end to put you into that transcendental space Bruce sings about in the last part of the song.