Poll: Best Song From Bruce Springsteen's Tunnel Of Love

i give springsteen so much shit but this album is jaw-dropping imo

every other break-up concept album i've heard sounds so unexamined, so immature in comparison

"Tougher than the Rest" was the highlight of Springsteen on Broadway for me.

Feeling like this is the album that should be getting the Suicide comparisons. I can imagine a lot of these tracks slightly stripped down/distorted with Vega’s croon. Slightly related but I remember a few years back hearing the opening seconds of the title track and briefly mistaking it for something off of the Downward Spiral.

the title track is my #1 bruce jam. i think. sometimes it's "state trooper" but it's usually "tunnel of love."

The lyrics to the title track are just perfect, I do think of them randomly sometimes.

"tunnel of love" is one of my dream cover songs to play
loooooooove it

"Valentine's Day," which is Springsteen on bass and synth, could be a warmer Suicide.

I've been on a kick of walking around after dark listening to side two of this album. I think the title track is still my favorite, with all those spooky background vocals coming at you from all sides. But I'm also realizing how much I love “When You're Alone.”

I can't really explain what I like about it, except that it seems to deepen as I listen to it. The surface of it is so bitter and vengeful and shallow, and then underneath is this wellspring of world-sorrow. There's no turn at the end like in Idiot Wind, there's nothing in the lyrics to shift blame back toward himself*. And yet the more I listen to it, the more the bitterness and the false pity fade away and what's left is just a gorgeous sweeping sadness.

*There's also, interestingly, nothing to suggest that she was wrong to leave him. Even when he's fantasizing about her coming crawling back to him, it's not because she realizes how great he was, it's because life is hard and sometimes stressful things happen that make you romanticize past relationships.

some of the most intricately synth work I've heard from the era

I don't know about intricate, but the synths are definitely integral.

for sure I'd call what he plays on "Valentine's Day" intricate.