8 Bruce Springsteen Songs That Reveal a Life of Depression

The Boss has battled depression his entire adult life and has been in therapy and on medication for 30 years. In a New Yorker profile, he says he’s still gripped by the pain of his early years and his parents’ struggles and his father’s relationship with him. “It’s the thing that eats at me and always will… Those wounds stay with you, and you turn them in a language and a purpose.” Here are just eight of his songs, among many, that speak to these wounds:

#1 Adam Raised a Cain – Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

In this song, which is steeped in biblical significance was partly inspired by Springsteen’s relationship with his own father and the son who rejected his father’s world comes to understand their relationship. “Daddy worked his whole life, for nothing but the pain / Now he walks these empty rooms, looking for something to blame / You inherit the sins, you inherit the flames, Adam raised a Cain.”

#2 Independence Day – The River (1980)

Springsteen’s father had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but he didn’t always take his medication. He was profoundly affected by his father’s depressive episodes and worried he would inherit the mental instability that ran through his family. “You don’t know the illness’s parameters. Can I get sick enough to where I become a lot more like my father than I thought I might?” In Independence Day, the son must escape his father’s house because “we were just too much of the same kind.”

#3 The River – The River (1980)

In a 2012 interview with Rolling Stone, Springsteen told of battling depression and suicidal thoughts in early 1980s. He’s been in therapy and on medication since 1982. “He was feeling suicidal,” said Springsteen’s longtime friend and biographer, Dave Marsh. “The depression wasn’t shocking, per se. He was on a rocket ride, from nothing to something, and now you are getting your ass kissed day and night. You might start to have some inner conflicts about your real self-worth.”

#4 Wreck on the Highway – The River (1980)

In describing his new memoir, Springsteen tells Rolling Stone that one of the points he making is that “whoever you’ve been and wherever you’ve been, it never leaves you,” he noted. “I always picture it as a car. All your selves are in it. And a new self can get in, but the old selves can’t ever get out. The important thing is, who’s got their hands on the wheel at any given moment?”

#5 My Father’s House – Nebraska (1982)

A complex, moving song, about lost chances, and an unsuccessful desire to reconnect with a lost father. “I was a pretty sensitive kid and quite neurotic, filled with a lot of anxiety, which all would have been very familiar to my pop, you know? Except it was a part of himself he was trying to reject, so I got caught in the middle of it, I think.” “My father’s house shines hard and bright / It stands like a beacon calling me in the night, Calling and calling, so cold and alone.”

#6 I Wish I Were Blind – Human Touch (1992)

This record regarded as being universally disliked by Springsteen fans and in 2012 was ranked the very last among all his albums by an online music magazine. On this bad reputation, Springsteen said: “I tried it [writing happy songs] in the early ’90s and it didn’t work; the public didn’t like it.”

#7 Devils & Dust – Devils & Dust (2005)

A fiercely anti-war song about just how far someone can go before they lose their humanity, told from the perspective of a young soldier in the Iraq War. “What if what you do to survive, kills the things you love / Fear’s a powerful thing, it’ll turn your heart black, you can trust / It’ll take your God-filled soul, fill it with devils and dust.”

#8 This Depression – Wrecking Ball (2012)

In his September 2016 interview with The Boss, The Guardian writer Jim Farber sums up: “Amid the murk of the arrangement, I could sense a feeling of emotional ruin lurking there, searching for an avenue of expression. It clarified the song, without making it seem cut-off or self-involved.” “Baby, I’ve been low, but never this low / I’ve had my faith shaken, but never hopeless.”