So I’m scrolling through a backlog of Coverville podcasts and I see that he did a Bruce Springsteen show, and I shot right to it. Because I have a soft spot for the Boss, and I’m fascinated by indie musicians who share it and are going to try like hell to get his reputation revived in the same way that old country-western has been revived. The most effective shot of this was definitely Bonnie Prince Billy and Tortoise covering “Thunder Road”. But I’m skeptical that it’s ever going to take. Springsteen mines the same territory as country-western musicians---valorizing the lives of the most ordinary people---but it’s way more uncomfortable because there’s not a thick layer of nostalgia to give the listener distance. The characters in Springsteen songs are people you know, and if you’re an insufferable music snob, odds are they’re the very people that you’ve spent most of your life trying not to be. It’s painful to listen to a lot of the time, because it’s just depressing to hear the small dreams and little frustrations that are just too close to home. But honestly, that’s what appeals to me about Springsteen. He’s successful as a social realist, and as bonus, his music really means a lot to the very people he writes about. You can imagine the characters in songs like “Atlantic City” or “The River” dipping into their savings to go to a Springsteen show, and making a night of it, taking a little break from the lives of quiet desperation.*
The resurgence of ugly right wing populism reminds me of one of the more amusing ironies that makes liberals feel superior, which is the disconnect between Springsteen (humongous liberal) and the right wing leaning of so many working and middle class white people who relate to his music. It’s a microcosm of this major frustration---they can get so close, identifying the forces that make their lives harder, and yet can’t make that final leap into realizing what has to be done to make it better, instead pouring out their bitterness into a vote for Republicans. (Obviously, not all, but a significant percentage.) I will say that this lens of seeing things makes the famous story of Springsteen and Reagan much more complicated than it appears to be.