“Badlands” by Bruce Springsteen

"Badlands" came off Darkness on the Edge of Town in 1978 as the album's second single, and it's Bruce Springsteen with his fists up. He had the title before he had the song, and fretted about squandering a name that good. He didn't. The riff borrows its bones from the Animals' "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", and Rolling Stone's editors heard the fury of the punk records he was spinning back then.

Jon Landau produced it with Springsteen, and the band hits it like a wall: Max Weinberg and Garry Tallent driving, Roy Bittan's piano and Danny Federici's organ swelling behind, Little Steven's guitar in the thick of it, and Clarence Clemons blowing a sax break like a man going over the fence. The song belongs to a guy down on his luck and mad at the world, who wants more from life than he's been handed and means to get it.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.