Tunnel of Love by Bruce Springsteen
Tunnel of Love is the eighth studio album by Bruce Springsteen released in 1987. In 1998, Q magazine readers voted Tunnel of Love the 91st greatest album of all time. In 1989, the album was ranked #25 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 greatest albums of the 1980s". In 2003, the same magazine ranked it at number 475 on their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The album, the last of Springsteen's work that was created in the Side 1/2 format of an LP, is one of Springsteen's least performed set of songs. The New York Times' Jon Pareles wrote that Tunnel of Love "turned inward, pondering love gone wrong. His first marriage, to the actress Julianne Phillips fell apart; he also decided to part ways with the E Street Band." "Brilliant Disguise" has been called "a heart wrenching song about never being really able to know someone," and "a song about the doubts and struggles of married life." Members of the E Street Band were used sparingly on the album; Springsteen recorded most of the parts himself, often with drum machines and synthesizers. Although the album's liner notes list the E Street Band members under that name, Shore Fire Media, Springsteen's public relations firm, does not count it as an E Street Band album and The Rising was advertised as "his first studio album with the E Street Band since 'Born in the USA'". On the B-sides of vinyl and cassette singles, outtakes like "Lucky Man", "Two for the Road" and a vintage 1979 track, "Roulette" were included. On the mini-album that accompanied the 1988 tour, Springsteen included album cut "Tougher Than The Rest", but included another River outtake, "Be True" a rearranged, acoustic "Born To Run", and the Bob Dylan cover, "Chimes of Freedom". Commercially the album went triple platinum in the US, with "Brilliant Disguise" being one of his biggest hit singles, peaking at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, "Tunnel of Love" also making the Top 10, reaching #9, and "One Step Up" just falling short. The 1988 Springsteen and E Street Band Tunnel of Love Express tour would showcase the album's songs, sometimes in arrangements courtesy of The Miami Horns.[citation needed]
Bruce Springsteen has said that, after 20 years writing about the man on the road, he was ready to write about “the man in the house”. The result? <i>Tunnel of Love</i>, his eighth studio album, and his first since the success of <i>Born in the U.S.A.</i> Released in 1987, <i>Tunnel of Love</i> found Springsteen exploring his characters’ inner lives. It was a conscious attempt by Springsteen to grow and evolve as a songwriter, and to meet the needs of his maturing fanbase. The album was also a deliberate attempt to step back into a more introspective place after the intergalactic explosion of 1984’s <i>Born in the U.S.A.</i> Instead of hopping on the hamster wheel of pop stardom and trying to create what he viewed as the impossible goal of repeating his previous level of success, Springsteen wanted to direct the focus towards his work as a composer and songwriter—while also turning his attention to matters of the heart. <i>Tunnel of Love</i> turned out to be a deeply introspective collection of songs about men, women and their relationships. To this day, fans still refer to it as “the divorce album”, as Springsteen—who’d wind up splitting from wife Julianne Phillips nearly a year after <i>Tunnel of Love</i>’s release—basically wrote an entire record about his marriage falling apart. But, as usual with Springsteen, the details are more complex than that. The album’s fulcrum is “Brilliant Disguise”, a poignant, lilting paean about the fragility of trust in a relationship, about the importance of vulnerability and about the delicate balance between the two. The album’s other songs delve into different views of this eternal quest for love and identity—some darker, some lighter: There’s the inner turmoil of “One Step Up”; the push and pull of commitment in “Tougher Than the Rest” or “All That Heaven Will Allow”; and the fear and emotional rollercoaster described in “Tunnel of Love” and “Spare Parts”. <i>Tunnel of Love</i> would be Springsteen’s final studio album of the 1980s, and it marked the start of a new phase in his career, personally <i>and</i> sonically: He did much of the instrumentation himself, with cameos from assorted E Street Band members on various songs. It was the first hint that the Boss and his ferocious bandmates were about to take a lengthy break—making this a “divorce album” in more ways than one.
