He recalls seeing a portrait of himself at a local store and the grimaces at the resulting alienation from his self. “Local Hero,” the third track, sounds like a stadium-aspiring heartland rocker, but is, perhaps ironically, a clever commentary on Springsteen’s discomfort with his own celebrity status. “Tonight I got dirt on my hands but I’m building me a new home.” “When it comes to luck, you make your own,” he drawls in the final verse. But for that moment, the song stood as a straight-shooting pop tune about reclamation. The slide guitars and introduction of Bruce’s now-ubiquitous faux-Okie-by-way-of-Jersey accent preview what’s to come with 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad. The song practically begs for live performances, and yet it’s only been played on-stage 20 times since the conclusion of his 1992-93 world tour.įollowing that is the album’s title track and fourth single “Lucky Town,” about the power of tearing down loose ends to rebuild your life. It’s a masterful flipping of Springsteen’s own tried-and-true script of setting angst-ridden lyrics to anthemic melodies (see “ Born in the U.S.A.”). “These are better days, baby / Better days with a girl like you.” “These are better days, baby / There’s better days shining through,” he sings in the irresistible chorus. (She appears prominently in the song, singing shimmering, gospel-like backup vocals along with Lisa Lowell and future E Street fixture Soozie Tyrell.)Įven though the lyrics are tender and introspective, Springsteen shout-sings with a ferocity that sounds at times like a growl-the guitars and drums carry the intensity of “ Adam Raised a Cain” (off Darkness), and the bass (provided by a then-little-known sessions musician named Randy Jackson) careens wildly like it’s about to come off the rails.Īnd yet, this is unequivocally a love song. The album opens with the snare-shot of its best track and lead single “Better Days,” a rock spiritual about Bruce’s own redemption through his love for Patti. As a married man now with two kids (and a third one coming a few years later), a more domestic Bruce here demonstrated a profound understanding of the double-edged power of love, its life-changing magic and the ever-present fear of losing it. Sure, it may not have the bubbling social and emotional angst or operatics of his classics, but Lucky Town represented a momentous change of pace for Springsteen. “I tried in the early ’90s and it didn’t work,” Bruce admitted during his 1999 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction. Songs from the album have received few live performances since the E Street Band reunited in 1999.Īmong the likeliest explanations for Lucky Town’s obscurity among Springsteen fans are that it was his first post-E Street Band record that the only E Streeters present on the record were Patti Scialfa and keyboardist Roy Bittan that the album artwork is pretty embarrassing and, perhaps most of all, that the autobiographical LP was too goddamn happy. Despite getting mostly positive reviews, Lucky Town is overlooked by Bruce himself, getting barely a mention in his 2016 memoir Born to Run.
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