Nick Hornby on "Thunder Road"
I can remember listening to this song and loving it in 1975; I can remember listening to this song and loving it almost as much quite recently, a few months ago. So I've loved this song for a quarter of a century now, and I've heard it more than anything else, with the possible exception of … Who am I kidding? There are no other contenders.
Maybe the reason "Thunder Road" has sustained for me is that, despite its energy and volume and fast cars and hair, it somehow manages to sound elegiac, and the older I get the more I can hear that. When it comes down to it, I suppose that I, too, believe that life is momentous and sad but not destructive of all hope, and maybe that makes me a self-dramatizing depressive, or maybe it makes me a happy idiot, but either way "Thunder Road" knows how I feel and who I am, and that, in the end, is one of the consolations of art.
~ from Songbook
It's my very favorite Springsteen song and would also easily make my top 31 songs of all-time if I were to write a book about them as Hornby has done. It actually brought tears to my eyes one time in the last couple of years but trying to find the entry now is like looking for a needle in a haystack.