Back to 11 Sad Songs About Car Accidents

Bruce Springsteen "Wreck on the Highway"

Hulton Archive

In this particularly melancholy number from the generally melancholy The River album, The Boss sings as a man who comes across the aftermath of a crash on the highway. "There was blood and glass all over/ and there was nobody there but me/ as the rain tumbled down hard and cold/ I seen a young man lying by the side of the road/ He cried Mister, won't you help me please," he recounts. After an ambulance comes to take the young man away, the narrator is left to wonder if "a girlfriend or a young wife" would be getting bad news from the state trooper that night.