My all time favourite song

Mr Trigg

Thunder Road, Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band

I could debate for hours (and have done) a top ten favourite tracks; it's damn near impossible to distill a life's worth of amazing music into a small list and be happy with it. However, if I have to pick just one track as being head and shoulders above the rest, there's no contest... Thunder Road.

Featured on Springsteen's 1975 album Born To Run, Thunder Road is sufficiently epic to be the average album's centrepiece or deep closing statement; Bruce opens the album with it.

Thunder Road is a continual inspiration; lyrically, stirring lines like "show a little faith, there's magic in the night" and the climactic "it's town full of losers, and we're pulling out of here to win" never fail to raise a smile or send a shiver down the spine. Musically, the song has no strict structure and builds up from a harmonica and piano intro, adding layers of instruments as the E Street Band start to play, and ends with a triumphant piano and sax-led coda that has to be heard to be believed.

This song means a huge amount to me; like Mr McGee's Green Day track, I heard it in my first year of University and it immediately became my soundtrack for the next 3 years, through good times and bad. I connect totally with this song; I can listen to it endlessly, in any mood, at any time, in any place, and it will always make me feel something. Seeing Bruce and the E Street Band perform Thunder Road live in the Millennium Stadium, up close in the exclusive golden circle section, is the closest thing to a religious experience I think I'll ever encounter...just incredible. Perfect.

Bruce Springsteen claims Born To Run was his shot at "rock and roll immortality'; as far as I'm concerned, Thunder Road is the sound of Bruce achieving his goal.