Bruce Springsteen

Springsteen's debut firmly established him as a potent songwriter and a talent to watch. As songs such as "Growin' Up and "Spirit In the Night" demonstrate, Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ bubbles with all the hunger and enthusiasm befitting a young, newly signed artist. Greater things would follow, but Greetings… certainly set some high standards.

Remember P.F. Sloan? Sure you do. It was back when every folk rocker worth his
harmonica holder was flushed with Dylan fever and seeing how many syllables he could
cram into every involuted couplet. There was Tandyn Almer, of "Along Comes Mary" fame
("The psychodramas and the traumas hung on the scars of the stars in the bars and cars --
something like that), and David Blue had his own Highway 61 too, but absolutely... More >

"The Angel" and "Mary Queen of Arkansas" are turgid unaccompanied-acoustic horrors that could scare anybody off this particular Dylan hype. But the jokey lingo and absurdist energy of everything else are exactly the excesses that made Dylan a genius instead of a talent--it takes real conviction to save "But did not heed my urgency" with "Your life was one long emergency." Even urban-mythos rambles like "Lost in the Flood" are not without charm. And in songs like "Growin' Up" and "Blinded by the Light" there's an unguarded teen-underclass poetry that has Springsteen's name on it. (Grade - B+)