E Street Shuffle is the best Springsteen album from an instrumental music point of view. If you mute the vocals, by far this is the best album by what the backing band is playing. However I am not entirely sure from a vocal melodies point of view.

From what I heard so far, Born In The USA is the best from vocal melodies point of view. E Street Shuffle is the best from the instrumental backing band point of view. Darkness At The Edge of Town is the best album overall.

I do find George Starostin first review of Born In The USA funny that he goes on an extended rant on the lyric philosophy of the album but I just listen to it and just think, hey this is a good pop album, who care about the populist message expressed by the album.