Happy Tuesday, folks! Yes, a holiday delayed the playlist again. We should be used to this by now. The school year is winding down, the parking lot at school is being eaten up by the construction, and I’m forced to get my steps in just to get to my classroom (in a trailer, where it’s been for the past three years). But none of that stops me from delivering unto you a playlist of some of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs, inspired by (1) Memorial Day and (2) the fact that Trump hates the dude.

1. “Downbound Train”: I think people sometimes forget just how dark the songs on Born in the USA are. Sure, the title track seems anthematic and fist-pumping, the sort of thing you expect to come blasting out of the speaker stack in an arena, but the lyrics to that one (and virtually all the rest of the songs on the album) are dour and troubled. At least here, the lyrical themes are matched better by the music, and I absolutely love the atmospheric keyboard part where all the rest of the instruments drop out and it’s just Bruce’s voice and that keyboard underneath.
2. “Ain’t Got You”: Is Bruce as clever a wordsmith as Bob Dylan? Lord, no. And that’s okay! Dylan is a once-in-a-lifetime sort of talent. Bruce is a working man’s lyricist, but he can turn a clever phrase when he wants to. And he does several times in this song, discussing how all the riches and success he’s gathered unto himself mean nothing if he doesn’t have the girl.
3. “Stolen Car”: Bruce tends to over-emote. It’s not his fault, of course; the guy grew up idolizing Roy Orbison, a man who turned a two-syllable word (“cryin'”) into a five-syllable word. But here, Bruce manages to tone down everything and just let the desperation and the defeat the character feels permeate everything, until you’re left feeling just as empty as the night was.
4. “The Promised Land”: Despite the downer tone of a lot of his work, I think Bruce is, at heart, an optimistic guy. He wants the characters who populate his lyrics to be successful, to be happy, to win, dammit, and nowhere is that more obvious than in this song.
5. “Rockaway the Days”: Of course, Bruce seems to me, first and foremost, to be a storyteller. His characters are hopeless romantics and strung-out losers, guys on the street corner begging for just one shot at glory and girls who sit at home, wistfully re-reading love letters and wondering when the dream died. And sometimes, the protagonists like to “drink and gamble . . . like to fight,” like Billy here. Ol’ Billy, he had some problems, and wasn’t able to overcome them.
6. “All the Way Home”: A song of hope and longing with a great, driving beat.
7. “Reason to Believe”: I think this is the song that summarizes Bruce’s beliefs more than any other. Yes, times are hard. Yes, life seems to beat you down day after day. Yes, there are hardships that seem impossible to overcome, frustrations that build up and overwhelm you. But, at the end of every hard-earned day, people do find some reason to believe. What else can you do?
8. “Ain’t Good Enough for You”: More sardonic, clever Bruce. Sometimes, you just aren’t good enough for the girl, no matter what you do.
9. “Wrecking Ball”: Is it about the tearing down of a football stadium? Or is it about a person smashing into your life and completely changing everything? Or maybe both? I think maybe both.
10. “My City of Ruins”: At the moment, one of my absolute favorite Bruce songs. It’s sad and hopeful and full of life in all its messiness. It’s a prayer for a better world, one where everyone can “rise up” and be our better selves. It came out in the shadow of the September 11th attacks, part of Bruce’s reckoning with that event and the changes it brought to the country.