Opinion Why Bruce Springsteen remains Boss in times of BTS and Harry Styles

In the era of BTS and Harry Styles, the 73-year-old Springsteen, whose earliest influences were bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and figures such as Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan, may seem to be a character from the prehistoric age. His songs even mention long-obsolete things that millennials have never seen, such as jukeboxes and car models now counted in the vintage category.

But far from being at the periphery of the musical scene, the septuagenarian Springsteen is right in the thick of things. He is fresh from headlining a hugely popular Broadway show about his journey that had to be extended due to high demand and is streamed on Netflix, made a podcast with former US president Barack Obama and has delivered three albums in as many years, apart from writing songs that continue to talk about love, loss and the search for identity, a recurring theme in his career.

Back in 1995, Springsteen had resurrected Tom Joad, the main protagonist in The Grapes of Wrath. When Steinbeck’s masterpiece was first published in 1939, it had sliced through the collective American psyche, leaving the reader shocked with its jarring, near-dystopian and yet lyrical portrayal of the plight of families that migrated from Oklahoma during the “dust-bowl era” — a time when a series of severe droughts, combined with The Great Depression had pushed rural life into the clutches of poverty and displacement. The book won the Pulitzer.

For his 1995 album, The Ghost of Tom Joad, Springsteen had imagined the titular character of the book — a symbol of the chasm between the American dream and stark inequalities — toiling on the streets of modern-day US. One of the most-discussed albums of Springsteen, The Ghost of Tom Joad spoke about people sleeping on a pillow of solid rock and bathing in the city’s aquaduct, a world where the “Promised Land” has metamorphosed into a place filled with the cries of hungry newborns, shelter lines stretched around the corner where there was “no home, no job, no peace, no rest.”

For nearly 50 years, since Springsteen first released his debut album Greetings from Asbury Park in 1973, the Boss — as he is popularly called by rock n’ roll fans — has remained among the pioneers of American heartland rock.

His songs include haunting elegies on young men who lost their lives fighting in the Vietnam War or soliloquies about dusty arcades and big baseball players reminiscing about their glory days, sitting at roadside bars. “Beyond the Palace, hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard, girls comb their hair in rearview mirrors and the boys try to look so hard,” Springsteen wrote in his iconic song, ‘Born to Run’, that painted a Steinbeck-esque picture of the working-class life in America, where two lovers try hard to break the trap together.

There are songs that talk about sinewy construction workers who are out of work, the aurora rising behind lovers on the boardwalk and stony faces left stranded on the fourth of July, the American Independence Day.

Towards the end of the 20th century, Springsteen deftly filled the void in songwriting created after Bob Dylan’s peak years and also became one of the greatest performer-rockstars in the world — his rendition of Dylan’s ‘Chimes of Freedom’ at a 1988 concert in erstwhile East Germany was heard by 3 lakh people present at the venue and even became a prelude to the demolition of the Berlin wall 16 months later.

In recent years, Springsteen’s lyrics have become more sombre, where he hums about now-gone bandmates, who left behind their Fender guitars, and talks of summoning his entire life experience and packing it in a letter.

“Neath a crown of mongrel trees, I pulled that bothersome thread. Got down on my knees, Grabbed my pen and bowed my head. Tried to summon all that my heart finds true and send it in my letter to you,” says a melancholic yet hopeful Springsteen in his critically acclaimed song ‘Letter to You’, released in 2020.

Springsteen’s upcoming album is the second in his career that doesn’t contain songs penned by him but feature a list of covers. Only the strong survive is a collection of 15 R &B and Soul covers of some of his favourite artists.

The tracks include covers of cult artists from the mid-20th century such as The Temptations and Jerry Butler. ‘In Nightshift’, one of the tracks that was recently released on YouTube, Springsteen takes the 1985 Grammy Award-winning song by The Commodores and with his rendition, turns it into a ballad that assures the listeners that it will be a long night, but they are not alone in the night shift.

“This time, I decided to do something I had never done before, make some music that is centred around singing,” said Springsteen while announcing the album, where for once, it is not his lyrics but his voice that holds the allure for fans.

deep.mukherjee@expressindia.com