In theory this is where it gets easier. For while Springsteen was still churning work of unyielding quality some of those tracks, in retrospect, probably should have been left in the vault. Doesn’t necessarily mean that choosing a ‘most’ is going to be easier but singling those ‘meh’ tracks out gets simpler

The River, released – just before I was – in October 1980, was Springsteen’s double album statement of purpose. We’re deep into Bruce’s era of stockpiling songs here and between the end of 1979 and May 1980 when recording sessions began and ended across two different phases, close to 60 songs were recorded to a finished state. As the studio time began to clock up an antsy Steven Van Zandt already wanted out, he was convinced to stay put by being made part of the production team that already included Springsteen and Jon Landau. SVZ’s imprint is clear on many of the shorter, punchier tunes but The River is a sprawling beast of an album that for many years became the best one-stop-shop for all things Sprinsgsteen. It’s why he couldn’t let it go – despite a couple of finished, mixed versions going to the label – as a single album:

“It wasn’t big enough. It wasn’t sprawling enough. It didn’t include enough. I’d gotten to the point where I wanted to include everything that I did, from the party material to my character studies, and I didn’t think I could do that successfully on one album at that time. I didn’t take it back with the intention of making two…. I just took it back with the intention of making it better.”

So, twenty songs. Are they all gold? Of course not. Hell, this is the first of many instances where archival releases would beg the questions ‘how did X make the cut over this?’ With that in mind…

Least: Crush On You

“Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you, Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you, Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you tonight”… I mean, it sounds naff enough once, let alone when it’s repeated ad nauseum after just the second verse. Verses so slight they feel like they were put together with fridge magnets. No amount of SVZ styled garage-band-rave-up sound can save this – even Springsteen has called it the stupidest song he’d ever recorded and would sarcastically refer to it as ‘a masterpiece’ in 2009. It becomes even more questionable when you weight it up against the aforementioned tracks consigned to archival releases like ‘Take ‘Em as They Come,’ ‘Roulette’ or ‘Where The Bands Are.’

Most: The River

This is very tricky. I love ‘Point Blank’, ‘Stolen Car’, ‘Wreck On The Highway’…. ‘Two Hearts’ is an underrated slab of brilliance and ‘Out In The Street’ and ‘Hungry Heart’ are undisputed fucking gems. But the second that harmonica hits or Bruce utters ‘I come from down in the valley’ you know where you are. It’s a PIVOTAL song in his back catalogue and while he still felt he needed four or five songs in the same style to make an epic album, Van Zandt was right when he said you only need ‘The River’ and you’ve got an amazing album.