#139
June 1984
Bruce Springsteen
Born in the U.S.A
5 out of 5
Highlights:
Born in the USA
Working on the Highway
No Surrender
Glory Days
Dancing in the Dark
My Hometown
Settle in. I’m on a plane with nothing to but listen and take notes.
I’m going to try to listen to this not with the ears of a teenage New Jersey born and raised rock kid looking for elegy and anthems but through the ears of today, fully aware of the dated sound and the overplayed singles (which seems to be every track on the album).
I fully recognize my bias and will try to be fair.
The album opens like the climax to something. Looking back, it’s the climax to a 10 year recording career.
It explodes. The title track HAS to be gigantic. The subject matter requires it. It’s not elegiac, it’s a wail from the depths of hell.
“Cover Me” is the paranoia of “Roulette” refined, simplified, obfuscated. Bruce wants to get away with it by hiding it behind a relationship but it’s about a struggle to deal.
It’s hard to hear “World Trade Centers” in “Darlington County” but it makes so much sense. Bruce, ever the storyteller, is singing from the voice of losers who think they are so much more than they really are. These guys...I won’t get political but life won’t end up treating these guys the way they hope. And they’ll take it out on the rest of us.
Then we settle down and the album starts to sound like songs that didn’t quite make it into The River. Which is fine cuz that record is brilliant.
Another incarcerated loser in “Working on the Highway”, a barely employed guy who loses everything “Downbound Train”, a stalker (rapist?) in “I’m on Fire” (The video sold this song as something else entirely. It’s a menacing interlude).
And that’s Side One. Treacherous. Terrifying.
Let’s go to Side Two.
“No Surrender”, a farewell to a best friend, a comrade, a partner. It’s loss.
I know that’s supposed to be “Bobbie Jean” but I can’t help feel that both songs are about the end of his relationship with Stevie Van Zandt.
When you get past the sheen and general bigness of this record it becomes evident: this is the saddest collection of songs Bruce ever strung together.
I mean his best friend just leaves, no word, just gone, blasting a hole in his life. But he knows that’s the right thing for him.
A dead relationship (I’m Going Down), two people who can’t love each other anymore. “I’m sick you setting up to knock me down”. So what else is there to do but look back on the past at the “Glory Days”? Who hasn’t done that? When life was good? When it was easier. When you had power, strength, beauty. But life takes its toll. You lose that speed. Marriages decay and die. It’s so important that it sound like a bar band. It has to. That’s where these people end up. Drinking, thinking, telling your boring stories of your better days. Your Glory Days.
“Dancing in the Dark”. You might think, well that’s the hit. That’s the upbeat one. Nope. It’s about fucking writers block. The inability to come up with something that pays your bills. “I ain’t nothing but tired, man I’m just tired and bored with myself”. He can’t come up with that damned hit song. And THATS the hit song!!!!
And then we come home.
Thinking about our youth, when life was simple. Sitting on our dads lap, “driving” the car. Civil rights was tearing the town apart. It’s the micro version of the title track. The town is a wreck now. Everyone’s moved out. It’s hollowed out. It’s “My Hometown” where the people should leave, but they won’t. They’re stuck.
I have heard this album 50 times. First as a kid. Then throughout my life. But never as an adult really...listening. It’s brutal. I can’t think of anything like it.
The music is in deep counterpoint to the subjects. It’s almost insidious. It’s the work of a master.
100/5
No comments:
Post a Comment