Album Companion: Darkness on the Edge of Town

Don’t be fooled by the title: Bruce Springsteen’s fourth studio album isn’t dark… it’s just real.

If Born to Run is unbridled romance, Darkness on the Edge of Town is unvarnished realism.

And that’s easy enough to understand: if you’d just settled a years-long lawsuit with your former manager that barred you from recording new music and forced you into a never-ending hardscrabble tour of secondary towns and tertiary venues, the romance would probably have been beaten out of you too.

Darkness on the Edge of Town is devoid of the romantic imagery and characters that populated Bruce’s previous album, and even the words themselves are tighter, terser, plainer. This is the album where Bruce transitioned away from his rhyming dictionary and vivid scenery and embraced an economical approach to storytelling that would become a trademark going forward.

Darkness is significant for more than just its lyrical evolution, however. It’s also the album on which the musical virtuosity of the “classic” line-up of the E Street Band can be heard and appreciated for the first time. Gone is the Spectorian wall of sound production, returning is Springsteen the guitar hero, and for the first time, Bruce’s voice is shaded with the empathy and world-weariness that comes with adulthood.

But don’t confuse realism with pessimism, because the unifying theme and greatest strength of Darkness on the Edge of Town is the relentless optimism, defiance, and persistence of its narrators.

Just as their author refused to compromise his principles and willingly paid the price for his resistance, the characters in Darkness refuse to submit to their lot in life. The resulting collection of anthems and ballads seem to seethe, mourn, and concede at first listen but rouse, galvanize, and uplift upon deeper inspection.

And deeper inspection is exactly what we’ve done here over the past four years. With this past weekend’s final Darkness installment of our Roll of the Dice series, our multi-year exploration of the songs that comprise Springsteen’s landmark album is complete. (Darkness is the first album to receive the complete Roll of the Dice treatment, but more will follow over the months to come.)

If you’ve joined me along the way, you might find it interesting to explore some of the earlier essays you missed. If you’ve been with me from the beginning, these articles are now updated and crosslinked to help explore the connections, genealogy, and comparisons between songs.

So if you’re inclined to join me, let’s take a look back and a look inside the songs that comprise Bruce Springsteen’s fourth studio album, Darkness on the Edge of Town.

• “Badlands” – the opening anthem that’s also an allegory for the legal battle that delayed but also influenced the album (originally published May 20, 2019)
• “Adam Raised a Cain” – the Steinbeck-inspired opening salvo in Bruce’s years-long exploration of father/son relationships (originally published July 3, 2022)
• “Something in the Night” – the rawest, darkest, and earliest performed track on the album, also rooted in the contemporaneous lawsuit (originally published May 28, 2021)
• “Candy’s Room” – a three-part look at the construction of a song about an idealized and idolized sex worker (originally published May 2, 2022)
• “Racing in the Street” – an exploration of the themes, influences, and artistry of the album’s crown jewel (originally published October 3, 2021)
• “The Promised Land” – the one track that gets darker rather than brighter on a deeper listen (originally published July 4, 2018)
• “Factory” – the albums’ plainest, most economical and most autobiographical track (originally published October 31, 2018)
• “Streets of Fire” – a cathartic sensory experience of a song that one feels rather than hears (originally published November 6, 2021)
• “Prove It All Night” – rock’s most ferocious wedding song (originally published October 24, 2020)
• “Darkness on the Edge of Town” – the title track that embodies the album’s warring themes: the inability to accept defeat, paired with an addiction to the things that ensure it (originally published April 10, 2018)

Each of the linked articles above features early outtakes and work-in-progress performances, great live versions, and my own personal reading and consideration of each song. By no means do I consider these authoritative or representative of Bruce’s intentions, but they do reflect the results of deep listening, research, and reflection.

If you have differing opinions on any or all of the above, I’d love to hear them. Otherwise, this closes the book on this site’s treatment of Darkness on the Edge of Town.