r/BruceSpringsteen • u/rollotomasi07071 • 24d ago
Misc Magic was released on this date in 2007
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_(Bruce_Springsteen_album)26
u/Henry_Block 24d ago
Long Walk Home is one of his best songs all time
5
7
u/ncc74656m 23d ago
"A prayer for our country," as he said during the tour.
It is deeply troubling that we can look back on those times of intense darkness and see how much further we have strayed.
"That flag flyin' over the courthouse means certain things are set in stone. Who we are, what we'll do, and what we won't."
May we recover that speedily and in our days.
18
14
u/BenSolo12345 24d ago
def the best 21st century album. The Rising has some incredible classics but also some real duds. Magic (and Letter to You, honestly) are both way more consistently great
13
u/fanofthomas4472 24d ago
Id argue western stars is one of his all time best.
1
u/ncc74656m 23d ago
100%. I got to see the theater version of it, and with a modern theater with amazing sound, it's one of the best musical experiences I've ever had. Stunning.
1
4
8
u/Logical_Air5085 24d ago
Not a fan of Letter to You tbh, but yes Magic is a consistently great album from start to finish.
11
u/microdotsleeve 24d ago
Great album which I have played to death, but like others say the production really lets it down and is showing its age now. The wall of sound idea is good in itself - the way Radio Nowhere barrels at you out of the blocks is awesome - but the way everything is so maxed out means so much gets lost in the noise. Was listening on AirPods a couple of weeks ago and it sounded so overloaded and tinny at times that it was hurting my ears.
2
u/ncc74656m 23d ago
I suspect that it'll come up for remaster next year with the 20th anniversary. Hopefully they give it the love it deserves. Such a truly great piece of American writing.
10
u/Scmods05 Born in the U.S.A. 24d ago
My personal #2 ranked Springsteen album behind BitUSA. It’s amazing and has only become more relevant as the years have passed.
“Leave everything you know, carry only what you fear”
1
u/ncc74656m 23d ago
As someone who grew up hearing Born in the USA before I ever remember hearing Twinkle Twinkle or anything else, it's rare to hear someone else call it their fav Springsteen album, but here's to that.
9
u/FalterFanClub24 24d ago
Ah my freshman year of college. I always associate this album with autumn because I played it to death that year. Plus it has that ominous, forboding feel to it like the season does. Every song packs a punch. No throwaways. Even Terry's Song is good.
1
9
u/Suitable_Bed_7783 24d ago
I will never understand why Bruce shelved this album when it comes down to live performances. Besides Long Walk Home and Radio Nowhere, and maybe Girls, most of the songs were rarely played after the tour, if ever again.
2
u/CulturalWind357 Garden State Serenade 24d ago
I think it was somewhere in the Carlin biography. But basically, Bruce felt this disconnect with the audience from about 2007 onwards. He played less and less of new album songs and relied more on older songs. Chart-wise, his final Billboard 100 hit at all was "Girls In Their Summer Clothes" at 95.
In Bruce's own memoir, he was disappointed that Wrecking Ball didn't do as well as he had hoped. And he felt that it meant his relevance and the relevance of rock music was fading away.
1
u/ncc74656m 23d ago
Honestly Wrecking Ball was a great album, but like Western Stars, the studio version didn't live up in my opinion to the live version.
Wrecking Ball from the Giants Stadium show (I think night 2, the one in the concert video) is such a roaring piece of pure rock and roll and art. The album version can't compete in any way, and worse, they had the nerve to pull that video for like three years off YouTube til they finally put up a high res version of the audio for purchase on his site.
It was a failure of his studio people if I had to guess where the blame should lie. If they had done a rip roaring rock and roll version for the album like Radio Nowhere, it could have done a lot better.
7
u/Logical_Positive_522 24d ago
My first Bruce album. Took a chance after Radio Nowhere was basically all over Welsh/UK radio stations. Spent a tenner and never looked back.
It's one of the precious few moments in my music-loving life that a door opened on a whole career of music and changed my life forever.
3
u/CopperFox11 24d ago
Same case for me. Had heard the occasional Bruce song on the radio but this was the first album of his that I bought. Have never looked back 🤣
3
u/Logical_Positive_522 24d ago
Oh cool!
I have a real fondness for Working on a Dream as well, but it was such a joy to go back and start with Greetings
13
u/RudeConfusion4866 Reddit's Only Human Touch Defender 24d ago
It's such a shame about the production value of this album, I think it sounds incredibly ugly, because my god it contains some of his best songwriting. Gypsy Biker and Long Walk Home are easily some of the greatest songs he's ever written.
10
u/gauriemma 24d ago
Agreed - as much as I usually poo-poo remixing albums, I would love to hear what could be done to clean this one up.
3
u/OatmealApocalypse 24d ago
i actually love horrible brickwalled 2000s mixing so i love this album so much 😂
1
u/CulturalWind357 Garden State Serenade 24d ago
Lol, I'm sort of in the middle with this. When I'm alone, it's a great, noisy, and chaotic album to blast.
But I wish some of the pop songs (You'll Be Coming Down, Livin' In the Future, I'll Work For Your Love) were a little less harsh.
5
5
5
4
u/_Rayette 24d ago
I remember burning this CD for a coworker and she loved You’ll Be Coming Down lol
3
3
8
2
2
u/Mysterious_Turnip_78 24d ago
Such find memories of this album. Born in 82 and was a fab in 2002 but was a mega fan by 2007. I went to so many shows on this tour and loved them all. Seeing jungleland and Santa clause in Paris a few days before Xmas was incredible though.
I still put this on regularly and now my 14 year old is a fan. He's just started learning sax so he can try to play the jungleland solo! His favourite Springsteen lyric is the barrel of a pistol spinning round bit from LITF
2
2
u/blaugrana68 24d ago
This album is a core memory for me. My dad used to play the CD on summer roadtrips when I was a kid
2
u/Yaboi69-nice 24d ago
The more I think about radio nowhere the more amazed by it I became. I think lyrically it's one of his most interesting songs. Because on the surface it's just a song about loneliness. But I think the song is deeper than that. It's not just about being physically alone it's about being surrounded by people who you feel like don't think as chaoticly as you do and the loneliness that comes with that. The most interesting part of the song to me is this collection of lines "I want a thousand guitars, I want pounding drums, I want a million different voices speaking in tongues". This is Bruce wishing for chaos it his him wanting the rest of the world to be as crazy as the inside of his brain feels. Seeing that feeling expressed in a song feels so special to me because it's a feeling I've had before.
1
u/CulturalWind357 Garden State Serenade 20d ago
Yeah, Radio Nowhere is song that grew on me over time. Initially, I just thought of it as "Oh, a typical modern rocker".
But when I learned more about music lineage and influences, it started to feel like Bruce was really pushing beyond his initial wheelhouse. In the Brian Hiatt songs book, Bruce talked about how the lack of guitar prominence was one of Steve Van Zandt's longtime problems. But with Brendan O' Brien onboard with his experience with Pearl Jam and Rage Against The Machine, it allowed Bruce to incorporate those 90s rock influences.
Then thematically, it showed Bruce's desire for a vibrant community. Not just a peaceful community where everyone gets along but a vigorous, lively community. And that "Thousand guitars" idea gets brought back full circle with "House Of A Thousand Guitars" (shout out to Willie Nile for recording a song by that title first).
2
u/CulturalWind357 Garden State Serenade 24d ago
This album grew on me over time. Initially, I only liked a few songs while others were too sonically harsh to be appealing. Now, I enjoy the rockers and pop songs alike.
One fan described it as "Pearl Jam Meets the Beach Boys". You could also throw in some Magnetic Fields. Or, you could also see it as Bruce's attempt to compete with the influenced artists who had sprung up like Arcade Fire and The Killers.
1
u/OQS 24d ago
This was the album that got me listening to Bruce's music originally. Although it's been pushed down the rankings for me over time I'll always have a fondness for it. I saw them on tour promoting this album in early 2008 as well and it was incredible, glad I got to see Clarence on stage before he passed.
1
u/ChasingPerfect28 24d ago
So many teenaged memories with Magic. It's a delight and full of so many gems.
1
1
u/thebarkingdog 23d ago
I hated this album when it came out. I was 20 years old.
As I've gotten older, it's become one of my favorite albums.
0
u/marumaruko 24d ago
This album contains his most boring, almost modern U2 like rocker in Radio Nowhere, Girls In Their Summer Clothes that I find very cringe, but also some of his best ever songs in Long Walk Home, Gypsy Biker and Devil's Arcade
50
u/waltercash15 24d ago
I consider this one of Springsteen’s most underrated albums. There are so many great songs - Gypsy Biker et al.