Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run

I bought this new at Tunes in Hoboken a few years back. It's a handsome little digipak, exactly mirroring the old gatefold LP, except in miniature. The CD itself is even designed to look like a vinyl record. I've never seen a CD with a black underside before. Very clean design, if a bit "millennial clever", and I've never had a problem getting it to play despite the unusual coloration.

The issue with writing about albums like this one, this year, is that everything has already been said. It's really hard to have an original thought about Born to Run, especially as someone who reads a lot of music literature, who listens to bands who worship at the altar of the Boss, and who literally lives in New Jersey. You already know what my score is gonna be. Odds are, you already have a firm opinion about the merits and flaws of this record compared to The River, Born in the USA, and Tunnel of Love.

As has been reported on in every outlet that's ever covered it, Bruce Springsteen finally delivers on his everyman-bard promise and next-Dylan hype on this record. They're an integrated band in the mid-70s led by a white, working class Catholic who lived in a carnival town in the shadow of New York City; every adjective in that last sentence was an essential part of their sound. They had a reputation as a rowdy live band that would only balloon after the release of Born to Run. They crammed 72 tracks onto a 16-track machine with perfectionistic, almost obsessive overdubs. It's a masterpiece.

The secret sauce here is that there's not one, not two, but three credited keyboard players, with Roy Bittan being chief among them. The Professor also happens to be the thing that makes Bat Out of Hell, Faster Than the Speed of Night, and all the other great Jim Steinman records of the late 70s and early 80s so compelling. It's also what I've always found missing from bands like Streetlight Manifesto or Jason Isbell or whatever who claim Bruce as a huge inspiration. They may have the detail-oriented songs, the classic rock presence, they might even have the horn section, but they don't have anyone on keys who can play like Bittan can.

I've been told for my entire life that Bruce Springsteen, particularly '70s Bruce Springsteen, is the sound of New Jersey. I don't know if that's true. Almost nobody I know talks like Bruce talks. Certainly nobody I know talks like Bruce sings, doing that weird Texas bluesman impression with the soft Rs and the drawn out vowels. Maybe I have a more limited perspective on it given that I'm looking from the inside, but I think that at the very least, the music of New Jersey has moved on from sounds like Bruce Springsteen's. More importantly, the economics of music in New Jersey have moved on from bands like the E Street Band. Bruce Springsteen is a talent, for sure, and a great songwriter and performer, but Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are one of the greatest creative units of the postwar era; we will never see their like again, because why would anyone pay a dozen people to do what one person can do with their laptop and a midi keyboard? I'm not alone in thinking that something gets lost without unquantized collaboration (even as someone who is currently making music with their laptop and a midi keyboard). The cult of the bard is ascendant over the cult of the band.

In the 70s, Bruce was writing about getting the fuck out of Freehold, a dusty town with no opportunity, to find fortune in the hopeful Heartland and on the open road. Today, the cheapest freestanding house for sale in Freehold is 900 square feet and $400,000. I can't afford that, and not for lack of trying. They don't make 'em like they used to because a family like the Springsteens (much less the Clemonses) would have been priced out of New Jersey entirely before they had a chance to meet their bandmates and write some tunes. Songs like Night and Meeting Across The River might not hit the same for the new New Jerseyan, but they certainly do hit hard. Not a single person in my social circle has sincere hopes for the future, but they all agree that they're better off in New Jersey for as long as they can afford it. It's getting worse here because it's getting worse everywhere, but it's getting worse much faster everywhere else. And should that change, in my revolutionary government, I will appoint Bruce Springsteen as Deputy Minister for the Arts.

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen is a good album, and I like it.