“Racing in the Street” by Bruce Springsteen

"Racing in the Street" closes side one of Darkness on the Edge of Town, Bruce Springsteen's 1978 album, and more than a few critics, the authors of The New Rolling Stone Album Guide among them, have called it the best thing he ever wrote. He started on it right after his New Year's Eve 1975 show at the Tower Theatre in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, alongside "Darkness on the Edge of Town" and "The Promise", but a legal fight with his former manager kept him out of the studio until June 1977. The first take, at Atlantic Studios in New York that July, was just Bruce alone at the piano.

On the record Roy Bittan's piano carries the hymn-slow melody, Danny Federici's organ swells like a church at midnight, Max Weinberg and Garry Tallent keep the pulse low and patient, and Springsteen sings like a man with nowhere left to drive.

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