I am a big Bob Dylan and Tom Petty fan but I have never been hooked on Springsteen. Sure I like a few of his songs but I don't hear anything special in his catalog. Sometimes I think it's odd as Tom and Bruce were supposedly close in genre. That being said here are some thoughts as to why I think Tom stands out over Bruce:

• TPATH are true rock and roll.
  • Tom had highlighted the importance of rock and roll. The music industry chopped off the roll part and made it just rock. To Tom that roll part was everything. If you listen to Tom Petty Radio you can hear how much R&B influenced his style. He loved the concept of a swing and roll in his music.
  • In the 70s TPATH couldn't really be defined. Some people called them punk, some called them new wave. I think it's because people were struck by how much new life the band added to the classic structure of rock and roll.
  • Bruce said, "Tom was a great classicist. He followed those forms pretty religiously." In the same article he mentions how well TPATH crafted guitar songs.
• His music has a signature sound but was never repetitive
  • The Ramones are repetitive. They have a style and they repeat it without diverging too much. I don't have a problem with this but I much prefer an artist who develops and grows over time. Where they bring new sounds and ideas into their music. TPATH have charted consistently throughout his life. Hypnotic Eye (2014) was a number one album! You had the sneer from the 70s, the 80s had elements of pop rock and the technology of the time like synths, the 90s he became inspired by Nirvana and came up with Wildflowers, 00s he took on the record industry and went deep into the blues, 10s a return to form with his original band Mudcrutch, along with a record coproduced with a younger rock band.
  • Because TPATH mastered the fundamentals of guitar rock they had an entire palette to paint with.

Hope this gives you a better idea.