The Promise, by Bruce Springsteen: Disc 2

OK, on to disc two:

Save My Love: Bruce sounds remarkably like Bob Dylan at the beginning of this song, which is a medium-paced rocker with some pretty good lyrics: "I'll ride that signal down the line / Till I'm home again with you / So turn up your radio /And I'll save my love for you." I liked this song quite a bit.

Ain't Good Enough for You: This has a sort of 50's-rocker feel, similar to the one that Billy Joel was going for when he wrote "Uptown Girl." This is, of course, a much better song than "Uptown Girl," and I can see how it could have turned into a very popular live song, with everyone dancing along to the very bouncy beat. But it really doesn't go with any of the songs on "Darkness."

Fire: This is, of course, another classic. As with "Because the Night," I can't really fathom why Springsteen didn't release it earlier. Maybe he felt both songs were too hopeful for the rest of "Darkness," -- which is, after all, really bleak. This version has a sort of pop feel that makes it easy to enjoy but waters down the energy from the live versions Bruce did in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Spanish Eyes: Another song about a guy hitting on a girl with a sugar daddy. I don't really think this song goes anywhere or does very much.

It's a Shame: This is a pretty good song about a guy stuck with a mean girlfriend / wife. "Well I walk the way you want me to / And I'll talk the way you want me to / And I've tried to do all I can just to please you." I think this could become a big hit on the country charts for someone like Toby Keith, who does a good job with the she-done-me-wrong type of song.

Come On (Let's Go Tonight): This song is basically "Factory" but with different lyrics -- instead of being about a guy having to work in a factory, it's about a guy trying to convince his girl to go out with him for the evening. I actually like these lyrics better than the ones for "Factory," which always struck me as too generic. "Now some came to witness, now some came to week / Drawn by death's strange glory they stood in the street / Drawn together forever in the promise of an endless sleep / Come on, come on, let's go tonight."

Talk to Me: Another upbeat rocker. It sounds a lot like an Elvis Costello song, and in fact I think Elvis Costello could have had a lot of fun with it. It also would have been fun to hear live. Presumably it was too upbeat for "Darkness," but I'm glad it was released now.

The Little Things (My Baby Does): Just an OK song that sounds like a bunch of other Springsteen song -- including a lot of the songs on "The Promise." There are a number of songs in this collection that sound like a cross between "Sherry Darling" and "Out in the Streets," but none of them is as good as either of those songs.

Breakaway: Presents a series of anecdotes about tragic proletarians in New Jersey. "Sonny abandoned his car last night / Had a meeting on the docks with a light blue Monterey / To break away / Sonny was playing all his cards last night / In a hotel room he dealt his life away / To break away." It goes on like that for awhile. It's pretty good, but it's nothing you haven't heard before.

The Promise: The lyrics for this song are really, really first-rate. Whereas a lot of the other songs in this collection sound fairly generic, this one is intensely personal: "I won big once and I hit the coast / But somehow I paid the big cost / Inside I felt like I was carryin' / the broken spirits / Of all the other ones who lost. / When the promise is broken you go on living / But it steals something from down in your soul / Like when the truth is broken and / It don't make no difference / Something in your heart turns cold." The song also contains a number of shout-outs to "Thunder Road." "Thunder Road, for the lost lovers / and all the fixed games / Thunder Road, for the tires / rushing by in the rain / Thunder Road, remember what me and Billy we'd always say / Thunder Road, we were gonna take it all / Then threw it all away." Musically, it sounds a lot like the album version of "Racing in the Streets" or "Darkness on the Edge of Town" -- a mournful, complicated lyric over slow, steady beat. This song would have fit very well on "Darkness." But if you had included it, I think you would have wanted to drop "Racing" or "Darkness" -- you wouldn't want three songs that much alike all on the same album. And while this is a very good song, it's not as good as either of those, in my opinion. It would have fit better on "The River," but Bruce may have felt he didn't want to answer the inevitable questions that would result from a song that so obviously appeared to be about himself as opposed to his usual characters.

City of Night: A very generic song about a guy taking a cab to see his girl. You don't need to hear this song, because you've already heard it before. As part of this same track, there's a completely different song that I don't see mentioned anywhere with the refrain "The way you belong to me." This song is actually quite pretty -- it has a sort of "Death on the Highway" feel.

Having heard all of these songs, Bruce's decision-making during 1978 and 1980 makes a lot of sense. He probably could have taken seven or eight of the songs on this album and turned "Darkness" into a double album. But he may have felt that his audience just wasn't ready for a double album, and that it would be safer to go with a collection of very good songs that told a consistent story -- and then he could always play songs like "Because the Night" and "Fire" live. After the success of "Darkness" and the 1978 tour, he decided that he could release a double album, and that's what he did with "The River." On the whole, I am confident that he did the right thing. Editing is just as important in music as in writing.

Nevertheless, any Springsteen fan should get "The Promise" -- both to hear the really good songs on the album and to appreciate the decision-making that went into "Darkness."