A while ago I posted about what songs were the most played encore songs. My friend Scott pointed out that a better measure of encore appearance would be the percentage of times that a song was played in the encore out of the total number of times a song was played overall. In other words, a better ranking would rank the probabilities that if a song was played, that it would be played in the encore rather than the regular set. Here, I rank the songs by this measure (omitting songs played less than 4 times overall):
| American Land | 100.0% |
| Hard Times | 100.0% |
| Land of Hope & Dreams | 100.0% |
| Twist & Shout | 100.0% |
| Dancin' In The Dark | 95.2% |
| (Your love can take me) Higher & Higher | 90.9% |
| Rosalita | 88.6% |
| Bobby Jean | 87.9% |
| Glory Days | 87.5% |
| Detroit Medley | 81.8% |
| Kitty's Back | 77.8% |
| Rockin' All Over The World | 75.0% |
| Born In The USA | 57.1% |
| Tenth Avenue Freezeout | 55.8% |
| Seven Nights To Rock | 50.0% |
| Thunder Road | 47.1% |
| Jungleland | 44.4% |
| Mony Mony | 33.3% |
| Ramrod | 28.6% |
| Girls In Their Summer Clothes | 25.0% |
| This Hard Land | 25.0% |
| Cadillac Ranch | 16.7% |
| Growing Up | 14.3% |
| Santa Claus Is Coming To Town | 14.3% |
| For You | 14.3% |
| Surprise Surprise | 12.5% |
| The E Street Shuffle | 12.5% |
| No Surrender | 11.9% |
| I'm Going Down | 7.7% |
| Hungry Heart | 6.8% |
| Wrecking Ball | 6.7% |
| Spirit In The Night | 4.8% |
| Raise Your Hand | 4.5% |
| Waiting On A Sunny Day | 3.7% |
| Born to Run | 1.2% |
This ranking is useful because it shows which songs are real "encore songs." So even if a song was lower on the absolute-times-played-in-encore ranking because it was only played 5 times the whole year, this ranking would show you that it's still an "encore song" if it was played in an encore each of those 5 times.
Here, I do the same ranking for the albums:
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It's pretty expected for covers to be encore songs, given the request portion of many shows (during which a stump-the-band request generally occurred) was during the encore. It's also not surprising that Born in the USA is such a big encore album, given the number of big-crowd pleasers (mainstream hits) on the album. Same for Wild, Innocent... only because of Rosalita's traditional role as a closer.
It's also interesting that (remember, as a percentage) albums that you would expect to be big pleasers for the real die-hard crazy fans (containing more rare and obscure hits) generally weren't a part of the encores. Tracks makes up the bottom of this ranking (and Greetings and the River which both contain many gems for the hardcore fans also had very low percentages), only outdone by the three other rock albums from Springsteen this decade. Why were those not in the encore? Again, it seems like the encore is more reserved for general crowd pleasers, and let's face it, casual fans come to Springsteen concerts to see Born to Run, Glory Days, and Dancing in the Dark, not The Rising, Long Walk Home, or the Wrestler.
I suppose you can't be too hard on Springsteen for this (and it's not necessarily a criticism), considering that overall he still plays more obscurities and rare hits than any major artist (and possibly any artist at all) in the world.
* Thanks to Scott for the suggestion!
Statistics from the same source as always.
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