“We Take Care Of Our Own” by Bruce Springsteen

"We Take Care of Our Own" was the opening salvo from Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball, the record's first single, and it went up for download in January 2012. It rocks at a clip, with the big-hearted rush of Arcade Fire and the Gaslight Anthem, younger bands he'd been championing, but the fist-pump is bitter: years of economic hard times have left people less willing to help one another, and the narrator goes looking for mercy and for work, with a nod to Hurricane Katrina.

Springsteen produced it with Ron Aniello, the two splitting drums, drum machine, piano and guitar between them. He debuted it at the 54th Grammy Awards, it was up for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance, Rolling Stone ranked it 32nd among the year's songs, and Robert Christgau called it the best single of 2012.

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