Bruce Springsteen
Every album we have reviewed, graded S to F.
- Albums graded
- 15
- Highest grade
- Average grade
- Graded S
- 1
- Span
- 1973 to 2020
Every album
15 albums, 1973 to 2020, each placed by its grade, then sorted onto the board.
S tier
A tier
B tier
C tier
D tier
The records
Newest first, each with the line its review opens on.
2020Letter to YouCut live with the band in five days, warm and unfussy, and short of songs worth the effort.
2019Western StarsOrchestral country pop in the southern California mode, and the prettiest record he has ever made.
2012Wrecking BallLoops, gospel choirs, Irish fiddles and a lot of shouting about bankers. The anger is real, the sound is a mess.
2007MagicBright sixties pop arrangements hiding some of the angriest political writing of his later career.
2002The RisingThe band back together for a subject that needed them, and about twenty minutes too long for its own good.
1995The Ghost of Tom JoadNebraska again, thirteen years later, without the tunes and with the whisper turned all the way down.
1992Human TouchSession players, generic songs and no urgency anywhere. The weakest record he has ever released.
1987Tunnel of LoveThe biggest star in the world follows up with a quiet album about his own marriage failing. Braver than it sounds.
1984Born in the U.S.A.Seven hit singles, a synthesiser hook on a song about a ruined veteran, and a country that heard the chorus only.
1982NebraskaA four track demo tape released as an album, and one of the bleakest records any major artist has put out.
1980The RiverA double album that deliberately mixes bar band throwaways with the bleakest writing he had done. The mix is the point and the cost.
1978Darkness on the Edge of TownThree years lost to a lawsuit, and he came back stripped of romance and writing better than ever.
1975Born to RunFourteen months, a nervous breakdown and a wall of sound built by hand. Every second of it is on purpose.
1973Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.Too many words per line and not enough money in the budget, but the writing is already frightening.
1973The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street ShuffleSeven songs, most of them long, all of them jazz loose and full of people with names. The one nobody bought.