Springsteen Lyric #104

It's fitting that my countdown debuts with a line from Springsteen's debut. In fact, if you're reading this right now, it's the 50th anniversary of the day Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. was released. Wait, check that. I am writing this on the 50th anniversary of Greetings' release (Jan 5, 2023). I have no idea when you're reading it.

Now, you might say this countdown is just an arbitrary exercise and that I purposely ranked this song at #104 instead of #103, or #98, so that I could make that debut comparison. And if you say that, what you're saying is that you don't believe I devised a robust ranking rubric that scores the lyrics on a 5-point scale in eight distinct categories. Categories that might look like the ones below.

1. Literary
2. Self-sufficiency
3. Context
4. Delivery
5. Meta-relevance
6. Goosebump index
7. Boss-ness
8. Wildcard

You'd be saying that the list is more of a means to an end: that the point of all this is to talk about lyrics. The ranking conceit is just a way to do that, and the placement of any entry is really more of a personal notion than an exact science. You'd be saying the "count"down part of the countdown doesn't really matter.

Are you saying that?

(It's a reasonable thing to say...but let's move on)

This lyric is a bit of a joke inside of a serious song. It's a funny image, but it's grotesque. It's Bruce's Catholic upbringing, a theme he'll return to time and time again in his songs, though sometimes much more reverentially (e.g., Jesus Was an Only Son) getting a quick wink. The entire first verse of Lost in the Flood is littered with Catholic imagery. "Sanctuary, holy stone, crosses, unholy blood." He's punning on the Immaculate Conception with some internal rhyme and alliteration to fit the style of his early writing. While some of that early writing is verbose without a purpose, this lyric is a good example of that style also adding another layer to the song. There's even some deeper analysis available that could look at this whole first verse and dissect it as a commentary on the degradation (sometimes coming from within its own "halls") of the Catholic Church. But mostly, this lyric just makes me smirk at the absurd imagery.

That's it for our first entry. See you for #103.