Springsteen's 1992 twofer, HUMAN TOUCH and LUCKY TOWN: S/D, and what the hell, a poll.

I guess I could've started two separate threads, but figured that would be annoying.

Listened to both today, and while not all of the songs are bad, necessarily, the production on Human Touch in particular is just so slick and dull that it flattens them. Lyrically, he was really leaning into cliche at this point.

Voted "Better Days" which the 1995 Greatest Hits rescued for me (I never owned the albums themselves), and which still sounds muscular and rousing.

I really do like the title track of Human Touch

Man, did these albums go splat: maybe the first time a Huge Star makes an effort commensurate with stardom only to go pffff. He must've thought it would work b/c GNR did it several months earlier.

yeah, the title track has a good Bruce guitar solo xpost

The title track is really good, and always a treat when it gets played. And of course "If I Should Fall Behind" became a live staple, too (and the Grant McLennan cover is lovely).

Wrong albums at the wrong time, for sure. Coming the year after Nevermind, it was the first time Bruce just felt irrelevant. (Which he had somewhat miraculously avoided with Tunnel of Love.) I voted Better Days, but Human Touch is good for sure. I only remember about half the songs from the titles, and unlike crypto I'm not going to reacquaint myself.

Ghost of Tom Joad isn't great imo but it was a much more successful navigation of the '90s currents.

title song of "human touch" is top 10 or 15 bruce for me, and is still one of my favorite songs in his live set. nothing else on either of these two records comes anywhere close.

I basically listen to Lucky Town with "Leap of Faith" taken off and "Human Touch" stuck into the album. It would still be a step down from his run of great albums, but it plays like a solid, respectable album to me.

"If I Should Fall Behind" is the standout - Dion did a nice doo-wop cover of it.

Also, I didn't realize the two CD's were handsomely packaged in a limited edition wooden box. (2000 numbered press run.)

maybe the first time a Huge Star makes an effort commensurate with stardom only to go pffff.

was it a huge star making an effort commensurate w/stardom, or was it a huge star thinking he could start over from scratch?

I don't know!

Has there been any attempt to reappraise Human Touch? If not -- I can't remember one -- then it would be unique.

I thought Dave Marsh always championed those albums, but it's also Dave Marsh.

(xpost) i can't remember one either. i do think springsteen's huge stardom, earned from a nearly decade-old album at that point, made with a different band, had already worn off quite a bit by the time his double release day came around.

“The Big Muddy” is the one that worked for me, but more in comparison to the rest of Lucky Town than his larger body of work. Listening to it now for the first time in forever (this version from his not-unplugged MTV Unplugged is good but also, even story-wise, sounds like an unfinished sketch with a great hook, much in the same way that his only-recently released early-90s songs do.

Even fans often semi-dismissively call the other band The Other Band. But I think Bruce fans understand the context of the misstep, as something he had to try and get out of his system, and in fact many consider the solo tour a couple of years later behind "The Ghost of Tom Joad" not just a kind of course correction but a rebirth, or even a peak. It kind of goes without saying, but it wouldn't have been as impressive a comeback if there was nothing to come back from.

Fwiw, me, personally, iirc it was the 1993 Unplugged performance that finally, fully pulled me on board with Bruce. I'm from Philly, more or less, and he was always part of the firmament, so much so that I took him for granted, and for sure never listened to him on purpose. But when I saw the Unplugged special (with The Other Band) I became a fan. It's not the best thing in the world, but I remember the performance of "Atlantic City" being particularly impactful. If I had heard "Nebraska" by then, I certainly hadn't heard that song electric.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVRAHKv254g

Voted "Local Hero," the only one of these songs that I really enjoy listening to. You'd expect it to be annoyingly self-pitying - an "oh poor me it's tough to be famous" song - but the attitude of "I made this bargain and now I have to live with it, and I'd do it again," makes it more interesting than that. It's like a "Growing Up" story in song form, and it's got some lyrical echoes of "Adam Raised a Cain," and overall I think it's a pretty good addition to the ongoing Springsteen kunstlerroman saga.

Neither one of these albums got even a sentence in his autobiography Born To Run. Same goes with Working on a Dream.

"57 Channels" is the worst single he'd released up to that point imo

otm

Tunnel of Love has become my fave Bruce, hence I'm inclined to vote for "I Wish I Were Blind".

I also quite like "Gave it a Name," which shares some lyrics with "The Big Muddy" and ended up on Tracks.

"57 Channels" is the worst single he'd released up to that point imo

And yet it's still better than most of what's on here, in that it's at least somewhat memorable and sounds like it was written by an actual human being.

It's funny to think of the dropoff in sales b/w BOTU and TOL in just two years from the end of the '85 US stadium tour. I suppose in 1987 t the kids replaced him with Bon Jovi.

I heard Lucky Town when it came out because it was supposed to be the "dark" record of the pair, but I wasn't expecting how bland it would be. Aside from a couple of story songs the words are "this time, it's great to be married". I'm voting for "Lucky Town"; the song is lyrically the same thing, but maybe the minor key gives it some tension and pull. Good, but probably no better than the best song on any of a hundred roots rock records from the previous ten years.
Never heard the other album, partly because the snare sound in "Human Touch" seems to have been engineered for maximum irritation to my brain.

With Every Wish
Roll of the Dice
Real World
All or Nothin' at All
Man's Job
I Wish I Were Blind
The Long Goodbye
Real Man

People have written good songs with some of these titles, but all in a row I'm stultified imagining what tedium Bruce could produce from them.

I thought Dave Marsh always championed those albums

Marsh said something like, "Bruce needs to pay as much attention to crafting his music as he does his lyrics", which would be the equivalent of another critic burning Bruce in effigy.

A lot of Bruce fans cite the 1990 Christic solo show he played as proof that these songs are better than people give them credit for, and that they're let down by the arrangements/playing. Like, listen to this "Real World:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bfO6xrRK10

Hell, "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)" from that show is good, too! I mean, it's not a good song, but I prefer it to the studio version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0hoIHgwFzw

At least that rendition of "57 Channels" sounds like another fun B-side novelty - I like those, I just wouldn't have expected them on his albums.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

when I first heard of this album amidst its release, I had a slight hope that the title track would be a Rick Springfield cover, as a clever callback

Scott Auckerman told a story about how he sort shamefully bought these two albums from a used CD store and ran into Bob Oedenkirk there who gave him shit for buying bad music.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

These two are some of the shoddiest album covers from a major rock artist at his or her near-peak I can think of

(He would be forgiven for injecting some IDAGF old guy swagger into his album covers now)

harbingers of sooooo many bad bruce album covers to come

BIG FONT COVERS

Bruce's golden era was the beneficiary of John Berg's reign as Columbia's art director and later creative director. Berg usually gets interviewed for his design of Born to Run's entire sleeve, but he would've had oversight over everything up to at least Born in the U.S.A.. It looks like he retired in 1985 but he's still credited on big releases that came out a few years after that. Some of his better albums have interesting covers that are just fine, but too many of them look like they were done (or rathe overdone) cheaply by someone who uses way too many Photoshop gimmicks.

* Some of his better latter-day albums

* or rather overdone