5 Fantastic Bruce Springsteen Songs About Lost Love

Bruce Springsteen has written songs on just about every topic under the sun in his illustrious career. We don’t associate him too much with heartbreak songs, in part because he has tended to concentrate on grander themes in his work.

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But when he has settled down to write weepers throughout his career, he has brought to those tracks the same level of insight and inspiration as adorns all his other work. Here are five of Springsteen’s best in the love-gone-wrong category.

“For You” from The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle (1973)

On his first two pre-Born to Run albums, Springsteen indulged in an unkempt yet thrilling verbosity he’d mostly holster for the remainder of his songwriting career. “For You” is one of those songs where he lets it all hang out, which is how you end up with lines like Wounded deep in battle, I stand stuffed like some soldier undaunted. The ornate wordplay also makes it somewhat difficult to say for sure what he’s on about in the song. But the ultimate feeling that “For You” conjures is one of disappointment, as his narrator can’t quite deliver all the drama the girl he’s addressing needs in a romance.

“One Step Up” from Tunnel of Love (1987)

We don’t see the second part of the line in the title, the one that lets you know things aren’t going so well: One step up, two steps back. Springsteen dedicated the Tunnel of Love album to his first wife, but much of the record dealt with the difficulties of maintaining a loving relationship. (The pair would split up not long after the LP’s release, so perhaps the writing was on the wall.) “One Step Up” is the ultimate downer on the record, a song about a guy who can’t seem to get his car or his furnace started, echoing the inertia of his marriage. By song’s end, he’s meeting strangers out at bars while dreaming of the better times he once shared with his beloved.

“I Wish I Were Blind” from Human Touch (1992)

Don’t blame the failure of Springsteen’s 1992 album Human Touch on the so-called “Other Band,” the musicians he hired to replace the E Street Band at the start of the ’90s. His songwriting quality control simply wasn’t near stringent enough on this batch of tracks. “I Wish I Were Blind” is a wonderful exception, however. Bruce gets inside a character who’s about to be phased out of a loving relationship for somebody new. The track gets a boost from both Springsteen’s anguished lead guitar work and some thrilling harmony vocals from The Righteous Brothers’ Bobby Hatfield.

“You’re Missing” from The Rising (2002)

Springsteen never explains what exactly has befallen the couple in “You’re Missing” that has left the narrator mourning the woman’s absence. Considering the song appears on The Rising, an album inspired by the 9/11 tragedy, we can assume it’s more than just a divorce separating them. In any case, what matters is how he captures the disconnect that occurs in someone trying to carry on a normal existence, despite everything taking on a somewhat foreign aspect without her in the picture. It’s an unusual Springsteen arrangement, one bathed in strings, until Danny Federici lets loose with a soulful organ solo that delivers an emotional wallop.

“Moonlight Motel” from Western Stars (2019)

This stunning heartbreaker is the high point of Western Stars, Springsteen’s finest post-millennial album. When we think of his lyrics, they usually don’t stray from the real world and earthly concerns. But “Moonlight Motel” drifts into quasi-mystical territory. It’s all part of the magical thinking in which the narrator indulges, as he desperately attempts to recapture the innocence and wonder of a former love, one that has long abandoned him. It leads him out to the titular location, which is now just a shell of its former self. That’s if it ever existed at all, except in some dream disguised as a memory.

Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns