Songoftheday 3/3/15 - Peace love and understanding tell me Is there no place for them today, they say we must fight to keep our freedom but Lord knows there's got to be a better way...

"War" - Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band
from the album Live/1975-85 (1986)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #8 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9

Today's Song of the Day comes from the "Boss" himself, New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen, whose 1984 album Born In The U.S.A. spun off a record-tying seven top-10 pop hits including a #2 with the lead-off single "Dancing In The Dark". The seventh, "My Hometown", hit the top-10 in January of 1986; in November of that year, Bruce would release his most ambitious package yet: a collection of live performances from throughout his career on five albums (or three cassettes or those newfangled compact discs). With a fanbase delirious for anything "new" from the Boss, the box set sold like gold, landing at #1 on Billboard's Albums Sales Chart in its first week, a first for a release of this size (the last time was Stevie Wonder's double-set Songs In The Key Of Life). Two singles were released from the collection; the first was a cover of an anti-war protest song that went to #1 in 1970 for soul/rock singer Edwin Starr...

Looking back, it was quite a daring move for even the biggest artist in rock at that time to release a song like this in the Reagan Years; nonetheless the single became Springsteen's eighth consecutive top-10 pop hit...

"War" returned to the top-10 in December of 1986, while climbing to #4 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart. Internationally, the record went top-10 in Ireland, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands, and #19 in Britain.

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Before Edwin Starr released his version of "War" as a single, the song appeared as an album cut on Motown vocal group the Temptations' Psychedelic Shack album in 1970..

British new-wavers Frankie Goes To Hollywood included "War" on their debut Welcome To The Pleasuredome set in 1984...

I'll go back to Bruce in 1988 in concert...

Up tomorrow: Canadian rockers are waiting for an eventual date.