"Badlands" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen, released as the second single from his fourth studio album Darkness on the Edge of Town in July 1978.

He is "caught in a crossfire", Springsteen taking significant lyrical inspiration from Elvis Presley's "King of the Whole Wide World" (particularly the words "A poor man wants to be a rich man/ A rich man wants to be a king"): a song which appeared in the 1962 United Artists film Kid Galahad and featuring, in its single master version, a strong saxophone performance by Boots Randolph.

The classic E Street Band sound is immediately present on "Badlands", as a brief drum intro kicks in to a powerful piano-and-electric guitar riff.

The song is taken fast, with Max Weinberg's dynamic drumming; indeed it contains his most well-known beat, a one-two-three-four-five-six-(double time) one-two-three pattern underneath the verses.

"Badlands" was not a commercial Top 40 success, only reaching number 42 on the Billboard Hot 100, even worse than the album's previous single "Prove It All Night".

Rolling Stone editors rated "Badlands" to be Springsteen's second-greatest song all time, behind only "Born to Run", and consider it to fit the definition of a rock anthem derived by The Who guitarist Pete Townshend, in that it is "praying onstage".

Neither Springsteen nor Columbia Records released a statement for the video's making, Russ Burlingame of ComicBook.com deduced it was due to the song's appearance over the end credits in the film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.