Happy 45th Anniversary to Bruce Springsteen’s fourth studio album Darkness on the Edge of Town, originally released June 2, 1978.
One of Bruce Springsteen’s strongest albums brings his narrative to a screeching halt. On Born to Run (1975), he offered a vision of escape: stories of musicians and gangsters and everyday dreamers trying to break out of their hometowns. It’s aspirational and, I think everyone knows, a fiction. But it’s the record for you if you’re willing to dream a little big every now and again.
But Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) is the album that will bring you back to earth. While the first track on Born to Run ends with “I’m pulling out of here to win,” the thesis statement of Darkness is “I want to spit in the face of these badlands.” We’ve got a man fighting his demons, resulting in a record that rips apart the scrawny, boardwalk kid image of the early years and finds Springsteen a brooding, revved up fighter. It’s musically simpler, ideologically progressive, and a major pivot in the Springsteen mythology.
The best-known cuts from Darkness are the “four corners,” Springsteen’s term for the opening and closing tracks on the two sides of an LP. Each side, according to this technique, should start high and end low. On “Darkness,” that gives us “Badlands” and “Racing in the Street” on Side A, and “The Promised Land” and the title track on Side B. The two side openers are undeniable anthems, over-filled with lyrical gems (“it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive,” “poor man wanna be rich / rich man wanna be king / a king ain’t satisfied ‘til he rules everything,” “Mister, I ain’t a boy / no I’m a man / and I believe in the promised land”) and replete with soul-stirring instrumentals. (The harmonica intro to “The Promised Land” is perhaps my single favorite moment in his discography.)
While Springsteen has a reputation for these arena-stirring rockers, fans know that the heights of his artistry are often on slower tracks (e.g., “Jungleland,” “Incident on 57th Street,” “Independence Day,” “Backstreets,” basically all of 1982’s Nebraska). This is especially true on Darkness on the Edge of Town, which gives us “Racing in the Street.” It is essentially the counterpoint to “Thunder Road,” asking what happens if all you did was keep racing, continually chasing the next big thing, without asking what you can do for yourself and loved ones in the here and now. It’s a song about being trapped in aspiration, not because someone is missing the ability to move beyond their circumstances, but because there’s never really been any way out.
Listen to the Album:
Which brings us to Darkness’ political bent. There’s an undeniable working class consciousness in this record, most obviously in “Factory,” but also in “Streets of Fire,” (sung from the perspective of someone who’s so exhausted with themselves that they see no way out) and the title track (about someone in such a dead-end spot that they turn to drugs, or crime, or whatever lurks in the darkness on the edge of town). Spitting in the face of the badlands is not about rejecting the place itself, but the dead-end wage labor that keeps people there. To gather in a room with tens of thousands of people and sing these songs is an act of solidarity, recognition that so many lives start, end, and never leave towns like Freehold, New Jersey.
The deeper cuts on Darkness don’t do a lot that’s remarkable, and that’s the point. Sure, the guitar solo on “Adam Raised a Cain” is gnarly, and Springsteen’s vocals on “Something in the Night” are quite something, but Darkness isn’t as full-throttle as your average seventies Springsteen record. It doesn’t have the same joy, or relentless drive that we’re used to.
This isn’t because Springsteen lacked good material. The Promise (2010), a box set of outtakes, features a few monsters: “Fire,” “Because the Night” (yes, he wrote that), “Rendezvous,” and “The Promise.” These tunes were left off Darkness because the day-in-day-out quality of “Factory,” rather than the magic of “Fire,” is the real subject of this work. You need a badlands to spit in the face of. The record opts for gravity, rather than escape. Solidarity for all, not liberation of the one.
Listen: