One of us here at We Want The Lion is a huuuuuuge fan of Bruce Springsteen, and is attending his concert at the BJC tonight. So, in honor of one of the greatest musicians, dare we say, one of the greatest Americans of all time, we're taking a timeout from football and giving you a Top 5 list of The Boss's greatest songs.

Before we begin, let me go through my criteria and process for selecting these songs. Is it really possible to come up with criteria for one man to judge another man's greatest work? No. But what I tried to do in formulating this list was take three major questions and apply them to each song:

1. Is this song generally considered to be a Bruce classic?
2. How much do I like this song? (Hey, it's my list, after all.)
3. How well does this song sum up The Boss's overall body of work?

I tried to stick to numbers 1 and 3 the most, but obviously number 2 comes into play as well. As far as picking the songs, I started out with an initial list of 25 from the master song list as brucespringsteen.net, and chopped five off each round until I was down to only five. Then I ranked them, again using the criteria from above. Without further ado, here's the list:

5. Glory Days

Is "Glory Days" the cheesiest song of all time? Quite possibly. But I still love it. I would think that a lot of Bruce haters would point to this song as being full of stupid cliches and being too simple, too literal and just junk overall. Those people need to remove the bug that crawled up their collective ass and died. This song is pure fun, and it describes something to which pretty much everyone can relate: getting old sucks. But when The Boss laments it, it sucks just a little bit less.

4. Badlands

Let me just say this: if you like Springsteen, and you have some friends that also like Springsteen, and you've never driven down the highway with those friends while you all belt out the chorus to "Badlands", then get off your ass! You're going to want to do that at some point. This is one of the many classics where Springsteen deals with escape, redemption and the American Dream. If that's not your cup of tea, it also flat-out rocks.

3. Rosalita

Well my tires were slashed and I almost crashed but the Lord have mercy
And my machine she's a dud I'm stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey

What a line. Out of the entire Springsteen catalog, this tune might be the most fun. I don't want to judge, but if you hear this song and you don't smile either during or after it, then you may not have a soul.

2. Darkness On The Edge Of Town

This is the cinderella of the Top 5, and it's really because it's my personal favorite. This song is classic Springsteen, full of imagery about being dealing with the past, moving on and ultimately being comfortable with yourself. In contrast to the carefully-crafted, heavily-produced selections on Born To Run, this song (and the entire album that bears its name) is The Boss at his most raw and emotional. This song is an amazing ride every time, and its themes sum up Springsteen better than maybe any other song except...

1. Thunder Road

Just an all-time classic, not just in Springsteen's history, but in rock history as well. This is like an epic poem set to music. The lyrics are The Boss's finest work- the "Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair" line sums up his body of work- and the music- from the piano intro to the full band middle to the saxophone outro- builds and flows to make the perfect compliment the lyrics. The images this song conjures up are so vivid that you almost think you lived them once. Just an amazing piece of work. If I had to pick only one Springsteen song, this would be it.

And as a bonus, here are the tunes that came in at numbers 6 through 10:

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