How did I forget Nebraska? It's such a departure as far as just being Bruce, a guitar and a harp as opposed to the bombastic E Street Band but it still works as a showcase for his songwriting talent. It's so dark and depressed, but it's not a shock considering you kinda heard him heading there on Darkness and def. some parts of The River.

As far as individual songs go, it really depends. I'm a sucker for the epics, especially "Backstreets." I really became attached to that song just through listening to it as I was walking around one night, the desperation and bitterness in the song are just so momentous; one particular section NEVER fails to reach deep into me and just rip everything out...

Endless juke joints and Valentino drag where dancers scraped the tears
Up off the street dressed down in rags running into the darkness
Some hurt bad some really dying at night sometimes it seemed
You could hear the whole damn city crying blame it on the lies that killed us
Blame it on the truth that ran us down you can blame it all on me Terry
It don't matter to me now when the breakdown hit at midnight
There was nothing left to say but I hated him and I hated you when you went away...

I mean, my favorite type of music is the kind that can touch a nerve or reach a certain part of your soul; the kind of music that gives you a kind of roller coaster feeling in your gut, and Bruce does that time and time again.

The versatility of the E Street Band never hurts either. They can give you something super funky like "Freeze-Out" or "The E Street Shuffle", they can absolutely burn the house down like a freight train with stuff like "Badlands" (Max is king) or "Prove It All Night" (live, from the minute amount of boots I've heard, is unbelievable) or they can kinda stay a bit reserved but still make things incredibly charged up ("I'm on Fire"). I've just kinda been loving it all really, even the minor album songs sometimes stand out because Bruce manages to have themes that can relate to us (what "Bobby Jean" kind of is to me); I just feel terrible that I really wasn't this into him before he came to Fort Lauderdale on the Magic (which I still need to check out) tour.