Every Song is the Same
Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart” is another example.
At first glance, it is a Springsteen song: longing, escape, regret, the restless American dream.
But underneath, it is practically a Motown song.
The handclaps. The vocal arrangement. The pop structure. The immediacy.
Springsteen was not abandoning his identity. He was revealing another layer of it. The great rock songwriter was also a pop craftsman.
The same thing happened when other artists reinterpreted existing songs. Zoot turning “Eleanor Rigby” into a heavy rock statement does not change the song. It exposes something that was already there: the darkness, the loneliness, the weight.
The clothes changed.
The skeleton remained.
Adam Ant is another purveyor of this. He, and Bowie. But they are separate in that Bowie was a master of reinvention, constantly becoming someone new. He had an ear to the underground. He knew how to bring it to the public. Adam is a post-punker/punker who moved into dance, and rockabilly and pop and, deep down, all the songs are the same, just gussied up a little differently. And his voice is better, more elastic, more interesting.
