Robbed hit of the week 8/14/23 - Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising"...

"The Rising" - Bruce Springsteen

from the album The Rising (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #52

This week's "robbed hit" comes from rock music icon Bruce Springsteen, who in the spring of 1997 returned to Billboard magazine's Hot 100 top-40 with his song "Secret Garden", which appeared on his Greatest Hits album and also on the soundtrack to the movie Jerry Maguire. Two years later, Bruce was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. Also in 1999, Springsteen released the rarities box set Tracks, which peaked at a respectable #27 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and toured extensively. On those tours he sometimes performed a new song, "American Skin (41 Shots)", that had people who were oblivious to his political themes in his songwork getting their panties in a bunch.

Bruce came back in 2002 with his twelfth studio album The Rising, inspired after a long reflection of the terrorist attacks on September 11th of 2001. Despite the uplifting spirit that's in the anthemic chorus, the verses grimly tell the tale of a brave firefighter that is climbing up the Twin Towers to rescue people, culminating in the realization that this act of courage will be his own sacrifice. The words and emotions are so subtly hidden in his comforting voice, but really listening will evoke tears from all but the heartless (who that day was bragging how his building was now the tallest, I will never forgive that orange clown for that). The music video produced for the song wisely avoided the literal theme of the lyrics and went for just moody shots of Bruce in various places recording and such, and even his official channel doesn't have it, letting the words speak for themselves on the audio clip...

Unfortunately, radio was so messed up at that point that a song like this wouldn't have a chance in that already hyper-corporatized focus group-driven atmosphere, and with most of his fans opting to buy the album, the single stalled under the halfway mark on the Billboard Hot 100 in August of 2002. Even on rock radio, the song stopped at #24 on the Mainstream Rock radio chart, though his older fanbase helped it top the new Adult Album Alternative (or "Triple-A") Rock airplay list for three weeks, get it to #16 on the Adult Top-40 format and place at #25 on the Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") list. Internationally, the single reached the top ten in Norway (#5), Italy (#6), Spain (#9), Romania (#9), and Sweden (#10), and made the top-40 in Finland (#11) and the Netherlands (#39), but in the United Kingdom it barely made it on the chart at #94 a year after its release. The Rising album, released in July of 2002, topped the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to sell over two million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2003, "The Rising" won for Best Rock Song and Best Male Rock Performance with Vocal, and was nominated for Song Of The Year (along with Alan Jackson's 9/11 tribute "Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning"), losing to Norah Jones' lite-jazz Grammy magnet "Don't Know Why". The Rising album won for Best Rock Album, and was also up for Album Of The Year, again giving way to Norah Jones that year.

The second single from the record, "Lonesome Day", got to #36 on Billboard's Adult Top-40 radio chart, #3 on the Triple-A Rock list, and made the top-40 in the UK at #39. That was followed by the adult relationship-themed track "Waitin' On A Sunny Day", which made the top-40 in Sweden (#15), Spain (#20), and Italy (#27).

(10/10)

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"The Rising" has become a staple of Springsteen's live shows since. Here he is touring behind the album in Spain in 2002...