Bruce Springsteen doc on BBC4
Springsteen has far too many fans of intelligence and discernment, not least on this thread, for me to feel able to support the idea that he's some sort of longterm blustery fraud, and I haven't engaged enough with his work to offer a thorough assessment of it but on the occasions when I have . . . .Christ.
I once had to review Human Touch, which he released in conjunction with Lucky Town, evidently because he was feeling so creatively fertile at that point he couldn't limit himself to a single album release. I'd recently seen an interview with him in which he came across as almost punchdrunk, as slobberingly incoherent as DD's opening post implies. Maybe that prejudiced to me. But the whole album struck me as a rock'n'roll heartland reduced to its most banal, musically and lyrically. Oh, there was humour. "50 Channels And Nothing On", but, y'know, he was only about the 8,703,623rd person to crack that joke at that point. The rest of it was just the half-blind hankerings of a half-man, half-rock'n'roll animal stumbling around in a modern world that most of us managed to get a handle on like we did our first computer but which he found bewildering and lacking in Soul and Warmth and Humanity and Realness and Authenticity and Blood and Wood.
Then there was "Born In The USA", Bruce at his most disingenuous, protesting that he never intended it to be the Reaganite, anthem it became. Sure, no doubt you didn't, Bruce, but did it not occur to you that it almost certainly would? That its hollered, stomping chorus would become a rallying cry for every jock, anti-disco, anti-Positive Discrimination reactionary in America? No doubt there are nuances aplenty in Springsteen's lyrical narrative but unfortunately he isn't working in cinema and they don't tend to get writ very large but get lost amid the phlegm and the holler and the guitar and the sleeveless check shirts and oldtime brass bits. I remember watching a documentary about white South Africa in the pre-1990 era and a bunch of young Afrikaaners at a disco jumping around to Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing In The Dark". He was a big favourite, Springsteen. Small wonder. Whatever his delicate intentions, Springsteen did inadvertently became the patron saint for the self-pitying white male convinced that whiteness and maleness are in crisis, backs against the wall in a world that favours everyone but them. And seriously, if he was ever angry about the misinterpretation of "Born In The USA", then he should send back or redistribute 95% of the royalties he got for it. Nothing ironic about the way he kept all the money.
Springsteen has far too many fans of intelligence and discernment, not least on this thread, for me to feel able to support the idea that he's some sort of longterm blustery fraud, and I haven't engaged enough with his work to offer a thorough assessment of it but on the occasions when I have . . . .Christ.
I once had to review Human Touch, which he released in conjunction with Lucky Town, evidently because he was feeling so creatively fertile at that point he couldn't limit himself to a single album release. I'd recently seen an interview with him in which he came across as almost punchdrunk, as slobberingly incoherent as DD's opening post implies. Maybe that prejudiced to me. But the whole album struck me as a rock'n'roll heartland reduced to its most banal, musically and lyrically. Oh, there was humour. "50 Channels And Nothing On", but, y'know, he was only about the 8,703,623rd person to crack that joke at that point. The rest of it was just the half-blind hankerings of a half-man, half-rock'n'roll animal stumbling around in a modern world that most of us managed to get a handle on like we did our first computer but which he found bewildering and lacking in Soul and Warmth and Humanity and Realness and Authenticity and Blood and Wood.
Then there was "Born In The USA", Bruce at his most disingenuous, protesting that he never intended it to be the Reaganite, anthem it became. Sure, no doubt you didn't, Bruce, but did it not occur to you that it almost certainly would? That its hollered, stomping chorus would become a rallying cry for every jock, anti-disco, anti-Positive Discrimination reactionary in America? No doubt there are nuances aplenty in Springsteen's lyrical narrative but unfortunately he isn't working in cinema and they don't tend to get writ very large but get lost amid the phlegm and the holler and the guitar and the sleeveless check shirts and oldtime brass bits. I remember watching a documentary about white South Africa in the pre-1990 era and a bunch of young Afrikaaners at a disco jumping around to Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing In The Dark". He was a big favourite, Springsteen. Small wonder. Whatever his delicate intentions, Springsteen did inadvertently became the patron saint for the self-pitying white male convinced that whiteness and maleness are in crisis, backs against the wall in a world that favours everyone but them. And seriously, if he was ever angry about the misinterpretation of "Born In The USA", then he should send back or redistribute 95% of the royalties he got for it. Nothing ironic about the way he kept all the money.
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