Songoftheday 12/8/15 - Woke up this morning the house was cold, checked out the furnace she wasn't burnin'...

"One Step Up" - Bruce Springsteen
from the album Tunnel Of Love (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #13 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 8

Today's song of the day is by Bruce Springsteen, whose introspective album Tunnel Of Love, sometimes overlooked due to following the massive success of Born In The U.S.A., but personally my favorite album of his, had nonetheless scored two top-ten pop hits in America with "Brilliant Disguise" and the title track. The third release from the album was the pensive "One Step Up", which quietly builds its pile of burdens like a train picking up cargo, perfectly capturing the unending stream which floods a person with depression, even though Bruce's inspiration probably was the ending of his marriage to Julianne Phillips. The video, like the two before, has Bruce singing live, which heightens the intensity of the clip. But the time he gets to the "I'm sittin' here in this bar tonight, but all I'm thinkin' is I'm the same old story same old act", I can't help getting choked up inside...

"One Step Up" became the third big hit from Tunnel Of Love, reaching the pop top 20 in the U.S. in April of 1988. The song climbed all the way to #2 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart, while making it to #3 for a week on their Adult Contemporary list. Internationally, the single peaked at #23 in Canada, and was a minor hit in the Netherlands (#44) and Australia (#67).

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Here's Bruce performing the song live on his tour behind the album in 1988...

In 2002, Kenny Chesney recorded a cover of "One Step Up" for his No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems album, and the two-step imagery fit perfectly...

...and finally, Bruce bringing it back on tour in 2014...

Up tomorrow: Aussie modern rockers get shockingly colorful.