WRECKING BALL
| Bruce Springsteen
WRECKING BALL
Wrecking Ball is the seventeenth studio album by American recording artist Bruce Springsteen, released March 6, 2012, on Columbia Records. It was named best album of 2012 by Rolling Stone and along with the album's first single, "We Take Care of Our Own", was nominated for three Grammy Awards. -wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Rolling Stone
the most despairing, confrontational and musically turbulent album Bruce Springsteen has ever made
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Pitchfork
an overtly political affair, with songs that tackle hypocrisy, greed, and corruption set to a musical backing of Civil War snares, gospel howls, and chain-gang stomps
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The Guardian
Wrecking Ball paints almost entirely in broad brushstrokes, but its bombast rarely seems hollow
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Ultimate Classic Rock
It rises to the level of its musical ambition, jumping from genre-to-genre, sometimes within the song.
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AV Club
For Springsteen, fear leads to self-defeat via a retreat inward; with Wrecking Ball, he tries to batter down those walls, both political and musical.
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NPR
Wrecking Ball has a lot going on. At its core, it's a big-band folk record like the 2005 Seeger Sessions LP, full of accordions, fiddles, banjos, hand claps and foot stomps
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NME
a triumph
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Slate
Wrecking Ball, sounds fantastic. It’s a big, barrel-chested, middle-linebacker of a record; it hits you hard, it rings your bell.
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BBC
a work of commanding range and masterful execution
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Pretty Much Amazing
Bruce Springsteen’s fierce and triumphant knee to Wall Street’s balls
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Paste Magazine
Wrecking Ball works only because it doesn’t represent any of kind of plot twist in the greater Springsteen narrative
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Slant Magazine
it takes only a little analysis of the lyrics of that song to realize how flimsy all the bombast is
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All Music
Springsteen is so focused on preaching against creeping inequality in the U.S. that he's wound up honing his words and not his music, letting the big-footed stomps and melancholy strumming play second fiddle to the stories.
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Tiny Mix Tapes
gains its potency from the mingling of Springsteen’s working class outrage and his firm belief in the compassion of our nation and its sufficiency to meet any challenge that we face
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Spin
consistently spirited and glowering, a discomforting album that never leaves his narrative comfort zone, equal parts impersonal and important
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http://americansongwriter.com/2012/03/bruce-springsteen-wrecking-ball/
Producer Ron Aniello and Springsteen have put together a unique combination of the old and new, an album where the banjos, fiddles, and horns of The Seeger Sessions coexist raucously with tape loops, samples, and, I’m not kidding you, a rap
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Rockhaq
every track is amazing and is written to perfection with superb use of instrumentation, beautiful vocals from Bruce and the gorgeous saxophone solos from Clarence Clemons
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CNN
Whenever America's falling on hard times, his music simply sounds better, his lyrics taking on near-biblical significance.
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RT
It’s an overwhelming, all-embracing statement on which a megastar sticks to his guns but this time uses ‘em.
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Chicago Tribune
He’s written some resonant songs. But he lost his nerve as a coproducer, going for stadium bombast instead of the unadorned grit these stories of hard times demand.
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Huffington Post
It’s both wrenching and jubilant; looking back and looking forward; steeped in sorrow as well as celebratory and undaunted.
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Monthly Review
a powerful statement of support for the working class, the existence of which barely penetrates contemporary art or politics
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The Quietus
Drawing on a disparate range of popular forms, it seeks to draw these together in the service of what’s been acclaimed by many as Springsteen’s most decisively anti-establishment statement.
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Vivascene
The songs on Wrecking Ball are grandiose efforts filled with generalities, almost without exception.
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Drowned in Sound
the project was indubitably about Springsteen’s love of the music first and foremost
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Secret Meeting
this record is one of his most important and, in every way possible, an essential album
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Under the Radar
Wrecking Ball's strength exists in its overarching narrative and sequencing—the relationships between the songs and their characters, and the shift in mood as the album progresses toward more spiritual themes.
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Record Collector Magazine
A singer and songwriter whose rightfully lofty reputation was built on “blue collar” paeans to working stiffs, he’s never lost touch with his roots – and Wrecking Ball just might be his ultimate statement.
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New Zealand Herald
Another political frontrunner for the hearts and minds of the American people
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Amino
If there’s one thing that absolutely makes this album for me it’s the band.
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Music Radar
emerges triumphant as one of Bruce's masterpieces
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Guitar Planet
more often than not Springsteen strikes the right chord
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Pop Matters
the new album is Springsteen’s most enjoyable and freshest-sounding in ages
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Premier Guitar
Wrecking Ball is a tour de force that chronicles the modern American way of life.
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Consequence of Sound
Wrecking Ball displays Springsteen’s refusal to coast.
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The Cambridge Student
The music on offer here is catchy, musically interesting, often invigorating and reminiscent of the Seeger Sessions
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Louder than War
He’s made a career of this kind of acute commentary but this time has never sounded more poignant, and never more American.
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Fade to Lack
an ambitious, emotional, and unforgettable masterpiece
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The Scotsman
Only Bruce Springsteen could get away with such musical profligacy on an album which deplores capitalist excesses.
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Our Vinyl
a journey through the strife, struggles and hardships that only Springsteen can define and put to music
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Nine Bullets
easily the best album Springsteen has released since 1987’s Tunnel of Love
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The Austin Chronicle
spins Springsteen's most focused work since 2002's The Rising and most defiant and hooky since 1984's Born in the U.S.A.
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Uncut
An angry Boss attacks big business on his grim but brilliant 17th studio album…
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VVN Music
This is an album custom-made for middle America, the people hit and hurt by Wall Street greed and those who suffered from the dirty deeds of others.
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The Arts Desk
Springsteen’s problem tends to be living up to different versions of himself.
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ROCKforward
what Wrecking Ball does is show an American rock and roll singer, nearly 30 years down the road from that cultural moment, still able to capture a sound and emotion that resonates deeply
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Baugh's Blog
Springsteen fans will probably love this album. If you’re not always convinced that Bruce is the Boss, however, you might find your response more ambivalent – like mine.
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Music That Isn't Bad
find a way to listen to this album. I don’t think you will regret it.
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The Pop Break
Springsteen hits back again for the second time in a decade with an album that speaks for its time bluntly but poetically
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Rock Show Critique
As a whole, Wrecking Ball is a pretty good compilation of songs by one of America’s best songwriters.
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spydersen
between great and very good among the totality of Springsteen’s work, which is to say, it will likely be one of the best albums you hear all year
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John Soeder, The Plain Dealer
rock 'n' roll tour de force
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Lion's Chronicle
a very enjoyable album with a unique and emphatic political message that does not hijack its musical integrity and a musical diversity and authenticity that may be refreshing to listeners in this age of auto-tuning and computerized sounds
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Young Academic
One of his most powerful albums for years
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Offbeat Magazine
We are in this with Bruce Springsteen for the long haul.
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Art Predator
its vision is clear, its story cohesive and true
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Independent.ie
A powerful offering from a man who shows no signs of slowing up creatively.
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NPR
one of the ways to miss the most significant achievements of Wrecking Ball is to concentrate on the lyrics and not appreciate what Springsteen is doing with the music here
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The Simpleton
Wrecking Ball will appeal to Springsteen fans and provide a much needed voice for the millions that continue to face hard times in an unfair world.
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Rukus Magazine
While Wrecking Ball may never necessarily feel like a giant ball of steel breaking new ground, it should at least knock down some walls around those who think Bruce has lost something over the years.
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The Jivewired Journal
It’s a pretty good album -- like I said, almost a home run -- but I just can’t help wishing it was a little better.
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Americana Music News
the strongest musical influences and reference point of this album are the folk music of the ‘40s and ‘50s and the civil rights movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s
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Dave Marsh
the musician listening to the voices he’s gathered and relaying what they say
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Raised by Gypsies
if you happen to catch Bruce in concert any time soon, you best hope he doesn’t decide to play any of these new songs
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Detroit Metro Times
Not his greatest album ever — he's competing only with himself at this point — but still a pretty great album.
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Timeout
It’s unlikely to win him a new audience, but it’s a prime slice of Springsteen as pissed-off-eldereveryman, a role in which he excels.
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The Orange County Register
Wrecking Ball is the inevitable, not-quite-flawless amalgam in Springsteen’s later catalog
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