Saddest Springsteen Songs

Recently Spinner ranked “The River” as the 25th saddest song of all time. 

The 25 Most Exquisitely Sad Songs in the Whole World: No. 25

'The River'

Bruce Springsteen (1980)

The Breakdown: Premature pregnancy, marriage and a weepy harmonica crush the dreams of a young couple.

The Waterworks: "We went down to the courthouse/And the judge put it all to rest/No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle/No flowers, no wedding dress."

Casualty Count: One couple's age of innocence.

This got me thinking about Springsteen’s ‘sad’ songs.  While there are elements of sadness (or darkness) in most of his songs, I wouldn’t actually classify most of his songs as fundamentally sad.  There is generally an optimism and hope of redemption that comes through in his songs.  After all, in Born to Run he sings “Together Wendy we'll live with the sadness / I'll love you with all the madness in my soul.”

However, he does have some songs that are just sad.  Here I rank the top 10 saddest songs, ranked in order of how sad they are (not necessarily how good they are). 

Honorable Mentions:

Loose Ends – Very sad song about love gone bad… But is far too upbeat to make the top ten… I find myself forgetting what this song is about when I hear it played.

Born in the USA – The album version has the same issue as ‘Loose Ends,’ which has also allowed this song to become grossly co-opted.  There’s a decent argument to be made that the acoustic version of this song should make the list, but I didn’t find it sadder than my top 10.

Lost in the Flood – Simultaneously incredibly beautiful and incredibly sad, this song is one of Springsteen’s most powerful.  However, the story in the song is told from a distance from its characters that reduces the song’s emotional sadness.

The 10 Saddest Springsteen Songs:

10. Wreck on the Highway (The River)

A song about the sadness of tragedy and loss.  Although you might argue this verse isn’t necessarily sad, it’s pretty powerful, and relates the sadness of the rest of the song in a way that I think many people can connect with:

Sometimes I sit up in the darkness

And I watch my baby as she sleeps

Then I climb in bed and I hold her tight

I just lay there awake in the middle of the night

Thinking 'bout the wreck on the highway

9. Sinaloa Cowboys (Ghost of Tom Joad)

This song is about a sad theme that appears in a number of Springsteen songs (including others on this list): the price you pay for pursuing a dream.  In Sinaloa Cowboys, the protagonists are warned in advance by their father: "My sons one thing you will learn, for everything the north gives, it exacts a price in return." But like most of Springsteen’s characters, the protagonists have no choice but to pursue their dream (or at least, in this case, escape poverty).  In this case (spoiler alert), the price Miguel pays is the life of his brother Louis.

8. Downbound Train (Born in the USA)

Starting right with the title you know this one’s gonna hurt… Many Springsteen songs are piano based, but this is a guitar song, and the way he strums the guitar really sounds like the way pain and desperation has become regularized for the song’s main character.  It’s only after waking up from a dream that everyday pain reaches a climax:

I ran till I thought my chest would explode

There in the clearing, beyond the highway

In the moonlight, our wedding house shone

I rushed through the yard, I burst through the front door

My head pounding hard, up the stairs I climbed

The room was dark, our bed was empty

Then I heard that long whistle whine

And I dropped to my knees, hung my head and cried

Now I swing a sledge hammer on a railroad gang

Knocking down them cross ties, working in the rain

Now don't it feel like you're a rider on a downbound train

7. The Price You Pay (The River)

A song about the price of chasing your dreams, but also the price of not doing so. 

But just across the county line, a stranger passing through put up a sign

That counts the men fallen away to the price you pay,

and girl before the end of the day,

I'm gonna tear it down and throw it away

For Springsteen to give up on the promise land, to give up on the dream, is to give up everything.  It’s so unthinkable that despite the pain and the costs that he knows chasing the dream will entail, he intentionally makes himself delusional to the very sadness that he sings about.   I suppose there is an interpretation that when he says he’ll tear down the sign, he means that he will overcome the odds… But just like Springsteen’s attitude in the rest of the song, I think the only way to come to that interpretation is to be desperately seeking some way to justify following the dream.

6. Youngstown (The Ghost of Tom Joad)

Springsteen sings about the economic devastation in an American cold war town, and the struggle of the American worker. 

When I die I don't want no part of heaven

I would not do heavens work well

I pray the devil comes and takes me

To stand in the fiery furnaces of hell

He is so disgusted with what his work has reduced him to that it would be counter to his very identity to die and go to heaven: he knows that he could only belong in hell.  The sad state to which he has resigned himself is enough to send shivers down your spine.

5. Reason to Believe (Nebraska)

My friend Charles covered this on his blog – there are two possible (not necessarily mutually exclusive) interpretations of this song: (a) Springsteen finds some kind of honor in the ability of his song’s victims to continue to find reasons to believe or (b) the song is about the delusional nature of the characters in the song who have suffered great tragedy.

Now Mary Lou loved Johnny with a love mean and true

She said "Baby I'll work for you every day and bring my money home to you"

One day he up and left her and ever since that

She waits down at the end of that dirt road for young Johnny to come back

Struck me kinda funny seemed kind of funny sir to me

How at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe

While I prefer the former interpretation (which is, to be sure, less sad than the latter), it’s still an intensely sad song.  After all, the song includes tragedies so great that it makes finding a reason to belief seem funny.

4. The River (The River)

Spinner’s choice comes in at #4. 

Now all them things that seemed so important

Well mister they vanished right into the air

Now I just act like I don't remember

Mary acts like she don't care

Mary and the protagonist (turns out to be about Bruce’s brother… or at least that’s what he said before he played this song at MSG 11/8/09) face such a dire situation that their only way to cope is denial.  ‘The River’ is very dark and promises a haunted future of lost dreams.  However, it’s still less sad than the following three songs for two reasons.  First, (despite the above verse), most of the song sounds more removed, as if the sad things are events of the past (even if the theme is timeless).  Second, the song is simply musically less sad than the following three.  That is not to say it’s not sad at all.  The “is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse” part sounds like desperation and resignation to sadness.  However, it still doesn’t reach the levels of tragedy and sadness of the following three.

3. Streets of Philadelphia

I was bruised and battered and I couldn't tell what I felt

I was unrecognizable to myself

Saw my reflection in a window I didn't know my own face

Oh brother are you gonna leave me wasting away

On the streets of Philadelphia

This song was written for the movie Philadelphia.  It’s the reason why you can start crying during the opening scene of the movie before anything has even happened.  

The filmmaker Jonathan Demme sums it up better than I could here:

AARP The Magazine

Glory Days

Reported by Meg Guroff, Jim Jerome, and Lyndon Stambler, September & October 2009

"When I was doing Philadelphia, I called Neil Young to get him to write a real kick-ass, American-dude anthem that would put all the homophobic white males who had come to the movie in a reassured mode. A week later I got this hauntingly beautiful, delicate song called 'Philadelphia' that was at the end of that movie. It was extraordinary. But we still needed that reassuring, hard-driving song. So I got in touch with Springsteen. I leveled with him. You know you've got to level with the Boss. I sent him the movie with Neil's music. He said, 'Okay, I'll send you something back in a week or so.'

"The tape arrived. My wife and I got in the car and put the cassette in. We started driving. Here comes 'The Streets of Philadelphia.' I had to pull over because we were both so overwhelmed. I thought, 'Bruce Springsteen trusts this movie and the audience more than I do. Enough with the anthem already.'

"Bruce is the greatest American filmmaker who has yet to make his first film."

2. Stolen Car (The River)

It’s a story about a marriage gone wrong – a love that somehow was lost and left a coupon imprisoned. 

And I'm driving a stolen car

Down on Eldridge Avenue

Each night I wait to get caught

But I never do

The stolen car he is stuck in is the empty marriage, and the metaphor is powerful and dark.  While you might expect the use of car imagery here to come off as corny, I don’t think anyone who has heard the song would feel that way.  The song desperation and helplessness – and leaves you knowing he really will never get caught.

1. Your Missing (The Rising)

Pictures on the nightstand, TV's on in the den

Your house is waiting, your house is waiting

For you to walk in, for you to walk in

But you're missing, you're missing

You're missing when I shut out the lights

You're missing when I close my eyes

You're missing when I see the sun rise

You're missing

God's drifting in heaven, devil's in the mailbox

I got dust on my shoes, nothing but teardrops

The song sounds the way that crying feels.  It opens with a short piano piece that sounds like it belongs in a fairytale, and I think it does that to prepare you for the sadness that is about to ensue.  In Wings for Wheels Springsteen says he often includes short little introductions designed to welcome the listener to the song, to invite them in.  The opening here sounds like Springsteen trying to give the audience a big hug for what they are about to hear.

The song is defined by prominent violin chords that set a deeply sad tone.  Springsteen goes through a list of things going on as usual, that are all made sad by the fact that the loss of a loved one has shattered the very concept of normality…. “Nothing but teardrops…”