Bruce Springsteen

Springsteen's The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle was everything fans hoped his sophomore effort would be. Released seven months after his debut, The Wild…. incorporates a variety of upbeat music styles, as his poetic, 20/20 vision brims with optimism. The celebratory highs of songs such as "Rosalita" help make this album a definite classic.

Greetings From Asbury Park, Bruce Springsteen's uproarious debut album, sounded like
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" played at 78, a typical five-minute track bursting with more
words than this review. Most of it didn't make much sense, but that was the point.
Springsteen was rhyming and wailing for the sheer fun of it, and his manic exuberance
more than canceled out his debts to Dylan, Van Morrison and the Band. The Wild,... More >

Folkie trappings behind him, Springsteen has created a funky, vivacious rock and roll that's too eager and zany ever to be labeled tight, suggesting jazz heard through an open window with one r&b saxophone, or Latin music out in the street with zero conga drums. He celebrates youth in all its irresponsible compassion and doomed arrogance, but he's also old enough to know better--for him, the pleasures of the city are bigger and more exquisite than the defiance and escape that define most hard rock. "New York City Serenade" is as bathetic as you might fear, but "Rosalita" is more lyrical and ironic than you could have dreamed. This guy may not be God yet, but he has his sleeveless undershirt in the ring. (Grade - A-)