The Essential Bruce Springsteen [Limited Edition] [Box set]

No doubt Springsteen has had a hard time choosing these thirty songs, and his choices won't please everybody. Why "Tunnel Of Love" is chosen to represent the album of the same name instead of the much better "Tougher Than The Rest" is a mystery, as is the omission of "Waiting On A Sunny Day", "You Can Look (but you better not touch)", and the criminally underrated rocker "Sherry Darling". The nine-minute live rendition of the good-but-not-great "Land Of Hope And Dreams" could certainly have been sacrificed in favour of one or two better songs.

If you're a casual fan, and just want one Springsteen disc in your collection, "The Essential Bruce Springsteen" is a fine choice, since it manages to include most of the highlights from his twelve studio albums.
So should you get this one rather than the single-disc "Greatest Hits"? Well, depending on what it is you are looking for, "The Essential Bruce Springsteen" is a better career summary in the sense that it is much more comprehensive, and also includes songs from his first two albums. But if you just want the radio hits, "Greatest Hits" is probably more your thing.

The "free" rarities disc includes some great songs, some good ones, and some utterly forgettable ones as well, particularly "Missing" and "Lift Me Up". But I was certainly happy to see that the glorious three-chord rocker "From Small Things (big things one day come)" finally available in an official Springsteen version, and the acoustic rockabilly of "The Big Payback" and the live "Trapped" and "Held Up Without A Gun" are very nice as well.

Hard core Springsteen fans will want this collection for the rarities disc, and newcomers and casual admirers will find "The Essential Bruce Springsteen" to be a comprehensive, if not exhaustive, career overview. The sound is excellent (some remastering and revision has been done by former Bryan Adams and AC/DC-associate Bob Ludwig), and even though the omission of "Waiting On A Sunny Day" and "Tougher Than The Rest" really bugs me, almost all of the thirty songs on the first two discs are excellent examples of the talent and versatility of Bruce Springsteen.
And the fact that only a few songs from "The River" and "Born In The USA" are included means that you can get those two as well without too many overlaps :o)

Disc One takes the listener from his promising early excursions like 1973s Blinded By The Light and 4th Of July through 1975s brilliant rock anthem Born To Run and 1978s awesome rocker Badlands, the gloomy ballad Darkness On The Edge Of Town and the defiant Promised Land through to 1980s majestic song The River (I really miss Wreck On The Highway here) and 1982s melancholy and brooding Nebraska.

Highlights on Disc Two include the powerful rockers Born In The USA and Glory Days, great hits like Dancing In The Dark, Tunnel Of Love and Brilliant Disguise. For me the most impressive songs here are the introspective numbers like Streets Of Philadelphia and The Ghost Of Tom Joad. Lonesome Day with its country feel, Mary's Place with its horns, and The Rising are beautiful and moving too.

On Disc Three, the live tracks include Held Up Without A Gun, a stirring uptempo rocker and Trapped, a grand brooding ballad. None But The Brave is also grand and beautiful, whilst Lift Me Up is a sensitive ballad with Bruce in falsetto mood. His version of Viva Las Vegas proves he's no Elvis but County Fair is one of those sad ballads that he does so well. This disc concludes with Counting On A Miracle, a beautiful acoustic ballad in folk style.

The chronological sequence was a good idea as one can follow the development of Springsteen's career through the changing sound, the varying themes and the ever more serious approach. Obviously not compiled for completists who will have all the albums and box sets anyway, The Essential Bruce Springsteen is perfect for those who wish to have the most of his best in one place. It's a winner through and through.

The three disk set includes all the obvious choices one would expect, such 'Born in the USA', 'The Streets of Philadelphia', and of course 'Born to Run' which remains his finest song. But it wisely drops some hits from albums that contained a large number of them (eg Born in the USA which managed an amazing seven top 10 hits in the US) and includes some of Springsteen's lesser known gems from other albums, which make the collection a fairer overview of his whole career.

Thankfully, this collection includes tracks from his first two albums, which the first Greatest hits did not. 'Blinded by the Light' and especially 'Rosalita', long a concert favourite, are the two best from this part of the CD.

One of the two live songs, '41 shots', is one of the highlights. My main complaint about the second disk is its inclusion of the 9+ minute 'Land of Hope and Dreams', a good song no doubt, but hardly one of Springsteen's best. The 9 minutes it takes up would surely have been put to better use by including two studio songs.

The third disk, for me at least, is a bit excessive, containing not hits but rarities. If this disk does not interest you either you may be better off buying the cheaper two CD edition.

Since Springsteen's decision last year to support Kerry in the US election, a lot of his fans across the pond have shunned him and his music. But anyone who pays even a bit of attention to his songs and especially the lyrics should have known all along where his political allegiance lay, and what the message of his music was. Writing 'The Streets of Philadelphia', about an aids sufferer, was one sign of his liberal beliefs, as was '41 shots', a protest against the gung ho shooting of an African immigrant by New York police, as were lyrics such as 'Poor men wanna be rich, rich men wanna be kings, and a king ain't satisfied till he rules everything'. It is Bruce Springsteen's tales of the everyday working man that make him such a musical and lyrical force.