The Promise

This guy here on the release of the Darkness on The Edge of Town box set coming out on Tuesday:

The one thing Springsteen knew for sure is that he didn't want to be a great pop songwriter. He did not want hits, not then. He did not want to repeat Born To Run. He wanted to say something, and he wanted to "leave no room to be misunderstood." He didn't want to try to make the greatest rock and roll album of all time, not this time. He wanted something else, something harder to describe. "I wanted to make an honest album," he would say. The band rehearsed and recorded "The Promise" for three months, trying to get it just right.

Of course, like any "real" Springsteen fan, he esconces his whole article in the outtake The Promise, which has been a legendary Bruce outtake for 30+ years.

The article hits a lot of stuff you're supposed to say about the album itself, including "gee, MY life sucked, MY dreams are now dead, I worked at a factory..." blah blah blah. But the fact of the matter is The Promise is a shitty fucking song. I get it as a poem, it's the typical young Bruce "sometimes the world isn't fair, when someone lies to you your soul suffers and a flower in Africa dies" etc etc etc. But camon - now that's it's been released, can we give up on this myth that The Promise is the greatest thing ever written, once so pure that even Bruce could not let the public hearing it taint it?  Ugh.

I love Bruce. You know this. And I once met him (don't ask, I will not tell.) But if every coupla years we're gonna hafta withstand yet another "Bruce was struggling to find himself in a cruel world that would not have him" reissue, I'm fucking snapping. Efuckingnuff already.