In Defense of Bruce Springsteen: Why the Boss is Boss

I’ve taken some crap lately for my appreciation of the Boss recently and I would like to articulate why I like Bruce Springsteen in more thoughtful prose than a discussion (see: yelling match) over loud music, sports, or even a game of beer pong. I’ve even heard ridiculous comparisons of Bruce Springsteen to acts like Bon Jovi who are inferior and evoke certain connotations about quality I believe that are less than apt descriptions for the Boss.

I think Bruce Springsteen is generally unappreciated by my generation, whose exposure to the Boss has been limited to his Born in the U.S.A. arena anthems (i.e. Glory Days, Dancing in the Dark, and Born in the U.S.A.). Our generation has mostly seen his commercial failures (the folk days in the 1990’s, the Tracks box set, Human Touch, and Tunnel of Love) within our living memory. The only real successes I actually remember by Springsteen before this year’s “The Wrestler” have been his Academy Award for “Streets of Philadelphia” and the release of “The Rising.”

So why does Bruce Springsteen deserve my time, you might ask? I’m fond of dismissing bands like Interpol with the question, “Why would I listen to them when it’s a rip-off of Joy Division and represents such an opportunity cost for good music or original bands?” Why would I listen to Bruce Springsteen for my dose of American singer songwriters when you have Dylan and Young, who I believe to be better than the Boss (although it’s pretty damn close call with Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen for me)? And with all those anthems permeating the airwaves as unfit microcosms of his catalog, I’m sure some people are debating why I’d even consider him a singer songwriter.

Bruce’s first two albums, both in 1973, were much more in the vein of Bob Dylan or Van Morrison than “Born in the U.S.A.” They just barely scratched the surface of his potential and had people giving him the Next singer/songwriter tag, particularly the Next Dylan. By 1975 when “Born to Run” was released, Morrison was dead, the Beatles were done, Hendrix was out of the picture, and Janis Joplin had already passed. The surviving rock royalty like Led Zeppelin, the Who, and Pink Floyd had all peaked and were about to start their declines. There was a vacuum in rock and roll and Bruce Springsteen released what was his breakthrough album, “Born to Run,” which saw his transition from folk music influences to rock and roll.

I’ll be honest with you when I say that I used to dislike Bruce Springsteen. My dad played him all the time and I didn’t even start to like him until high school. My brother and I mercilessly mocked him all the time and sang the most outlandish lyrics from his “Tracks” collection (“You do the crying/ba ba/I’ll do the dishessss”) back at him. Bruce Springsteen took some weird risks and definitely didn’t bat 1.000, let me tell you that. But neither did anyone else, including fan favorites like the Beatles, Zep, the Rolling Stones, or the great rock’n’roll savior himself, Bobbie Dylan. Everyone who takes enough risks or plays long enough fails a fair amount. Artists who don’t take any risks aren’t really artists after a point.

So when did the change happen? Did I wake up and all of the sudden appreciate the man? The answer is no, it happened grudgingly and over time. I really started to like the Boss when I was forced to watch a DVD of a live concert where it was impossible to deny his greatness as a performer or watch his relentless energy and not be amazed. The man puts on an incredible show. As someone who has seen a lot of shows with performers that mail it in or only perform their new albums (I’m looking at you, Ray Davies!), it’s always a breath of fresh air when someone understands that selling a million records is as much of an obligation as it is a release from the bonds of your fans.

Still, it wasn’t until I saw him live in person and was able to gauge him for myself that I really bought into Bruce Springsteen as a bona fide legend. The thing that had always held me back was whether I bought the amount of emotion in his work; I think that it is both his greatest strength and his most divisive weakness. He’s intensely personal and no one questions his sincerity, but I really think most people dislike Bruce Springsteen because they can’t handle the overpowering emotion and drama that sometimes dominate his songs. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if a line should make you wince or appreciate the glorification. When I saw him live, it ceased to be cheese and I began to view his work as a passionate, romanticized vision of America from the perspective of a blue collar kid from New Jersey.

Getting back to “Born to Run,” this album saw the boss fully embrace his lens of ordinary life as something more beautiful and heavier than it seemed. The Boss created a world that understood the reckless passions of youth and saw the seedy underbelly of New Jersey as a battleground for their souls. It wasn’t about the cold realities; instead, the everyday routines were fantastic and just maybe life would be OK if you busted town with your sweetheart. It is this Bruce Springsteen that really drew me in. It’s no secret that the American dream is one of my great passions, both in the rosy optimism of a rags to riches story that engenders hope and the crushing disillusionment for those that find a failed education system and a de facto aristocracy resulting from America’s failure to close the income gap between the have’s and the have nots. To me, Bruce Springsteen represents the incredible highs and lows of the American experience. Even when Bruce Springsteen was at his peak, he never lost his devotion to this America.

The Boss may not be the preeminent modern American storyteller (he’s not), but the way he portrays the lives of Americans conveys the hope and the substance of their stories. He’s made songs about the dreams of high school kids, small towners who peaked on their high school football teams, the plight of Vietnam vets, police brutality, and ultimately the American psyche after 9/11. His catalog rides the drama up and down in a way that leads me to suspect the Boss himself can’t really control them, similar to the bipolar writings of Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac as they explored and struggled to embrace the opportunities and contradictions underlying the American dream.

As an American storyteller and singer songwriter, Bruce Springsteen is most commonly compared to the other greats, notably Bob Dylan and Neil Young. If you don’t buy that the Boss transcends the cheese in his music, you probably compare him to Bob Seger, who suffers from my Interpol argument in terms of listening hours on my iPod. Dylan and Young are the more apt comparison. The three are moralists in how they frame the world and tell their stories of the late 20th century American experience. Among them, the Boss is the most prone to glorify the mundane and give it an epic treatment. He’s also largely credited as the best performer, although I think all three are probably exceptional.

Dylan is more about the metaphysical context of the injustices and his storytelling was the least straight forward of the three. He has the most folk records in his catalog and is the best lyricist. He’s also clearly had the most influential career-the other two largely succeeded because of the ground that Dylan broke before them. Young is much more similar to Bruce Springsteen; he’s taken the weird chances and has played more rock and roll than Dylan. Young was more about the conflicts and idealism swirling around internally than Bruce. He tackled the longing of the American heart, both through his voice and his words, and struck a powerful chord. Neil Young wrote the nine, ten minute epics like “Cortez the Killer” and “Like a Hurricane” and, in the modern era, writes among the most explicitly political songs around. Young and Springsteen have both been extremely vocal critics of the former (former!) president Bush.

Although there’s a lot more to say, I think that the other point I wanted to touch on was “The Rising,” which was what really cemented him as an icon in my mind. “The Rising” may not be the most articulate expression of post-9/11 America, but Bruce Springsteen is not known for his lyrical eloquence or verbal craftiness. To me, the point of art is to convey an emotion, an experience, or capture a feeling. The Boss can be better at that than almost anyone, he makes you soar and sink with him, and “The Rising” proves to be no exception. It is an album that follows the Boss as he tries to make sense of such a horrific occurrence. It has somber tones and joyous choruses, hope and loss, confusion and warnings. ‘The Rising” embodies cautious optimism for the future without anger and warns against acting impulsively. The record shows the resilience and strength that it takes to be hopeful and rebuild from an unprecedented tragedy. Someone will find the right words, but I haven’t felt anyone capture the tone and the mood of a backpedaling America the same way since.

Bruce Springsteen is not for everyone certainly. Some people will simply never like him or be unable to get past the cheese that is inherent to his brand of dramatization. But I think he should be recognized for more than his arena anthems or he’d really be no better than Bob Seger. He’s a great songwriter and has been a powerful voice in music for over a generation. He's an authentic artist who has not pandered and can never be accused of not trying when far more artists quit than we'd like to admit. He belongs in the echelon of rock and roll royalty, love him or hate him.