Posted on 09/01/2013 4:19:27 PM PDT by nickcarraway
An entire generation has dismissed The Boss' music as lame "dad rock." Here's why they're all wrong
Every few weeks or so, I’ll be talking to someone at a bar or club or house party, and the conversation will inevitably turn toward Bruce Springsteen. The exchange is usually as follows:
BAR PATRON/PARTY GUEST: So, what kind of music do you listen to?
ME: Oh, a little bit of everything … blues, jazz, funk, Bruce Springsteen (brief pause) … you know, my tastes are super eclectic.
BAR PATRON/PARTY GUEST: Um, why do you like Springsteen?
ME: So, you don’t like Bruce Springsteen?
BAR PATRON/PARTY GUEST: Ugh. No.
(Long pause)
ME: (Shuffling away while muttering angrily, like an elderly woman being chastised for feeding pigeons) Well, you should.
This person will then enumerate the list of reasons why he dislikes Bruce Springsteen, usually employing four out of six of the following arguments:
He’s old. He sucks. He sucks because he’s old. He’s old because he sucks. He sings about being a member of the working class even though he’s made millions and millions of dollars over the past 30 years “Born in the USA” sucks. In my 24 years as a die-hard Bruce fan, I have had this conversation approximately eight or nine hundred thousand times. While the people on the other end tend to skew toward a specific demographic — white, male, in a creative profession, dating someone with bangs and an Egon Schiele tattoo — they come from a wide range of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, from Bushwick installation artists to a bouncer I met in Ireland, who used his loathing for “Born in the USA”
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
“I hated Springsteen before hating Sprinsteen was cool.”
I don’t hate Springsteen. His music is honest, but of mediocre quality.
I did not understand his stardom, I don’t understand the current dislike.
He seems like a decent enough performer. Mostly mediocre.
What is there to like or dislike ?
Springsteen’s real problem is that he has not aged well at all. As a songwriter he penned some great hits, just listen to Southside Johnny and Patti Smith. Some people love the way he performs while many others know he sucks.
I’m a musician. Play for fun now, used to do session work, have played for recording artists.
BS (I like that) has written one good song. “The Fever”, which he wrote for Southside Johnny.
His goal seems to be "authenticity" - which he tries to achieve through careful artifice.
His first album was released around the same time as American Graffiti - a time of maudlin nostalgia.
Lucas and Springsteen were both twenty-somethings mourning their lost teenage years and blaming Vietnam for the fact that time passes.
CC
I can't put my finger on what it is about his music that I don't dig. But there is something about it that just doesn't speak to me like it has millions of others (makes one wonder about peer pressure).
Kind of the same with U2. Just didn't feel it. Do remember when U2 hit the "scene" as it were, and I recall the girls all saying "I love U2"... Something about them, and their music that never spoke to me. Not that it's bad per se, just that other artists' material was better.
Steely Dan
I saw Southside Johnny about 20 years ago at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano just before he moved back to Jersey.
“Green Thoughts” and “Especially For You” are desert island discs for me.
CC
What about Steely Dan?
Something I agree with the slacker, pierced generation about..............
I like Springsteen’s early stuff up until the late 70s. Don’t love it, like it. After that, aside from several songs here & there, his musical output has been third rate claptrap.
He sucks because he’s old.
He’s old because he sucks.
He sings about being a member of the working class even though he’s made millions and millions of dollars over the past 30 years.
He professes liberal/socialist garbage for the rest of us, but hoardes his money like a miser
You suck because you don't even realize why he sucks!
Nothing personal, I just like good music.
The biggest problem with America's entertainment lovers is that they prefer noise to music.
Leni
Springsteen sux.
Always has.
I was in my early teens when “everybodys got a hungry heart” came out. Even then I thought “now that’s a stupid, silly , pointless song.” And what’s more the singing style sounded cheap and affected. The only thing I liked of his was “blinded by the light” and that was when it was covered by Manfred Mann.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
OK, politics aside, and talking about when Springsteen was in his heyday - mid 70’s to early ‘90s.
“Hungry Heart” was easily his worst song on any album from that era. By far. Pure pop, and very far away from who Springsteen really was. Why the record companies chose to push that song, I will never know.
Manfred Mann’s cover of “Blinded By The Light” is easily and far and away the WORST cover of any song by any band ever. You really, REALLY have to be a Neanderthal moron to like that cover, and be utterly oblivious to his message from that time. End of discussion on that.
It is unfortunate that Springsteen turned to the Dark Side. He would have been such a force for good. He sold his soul for earthly treasures. A shame.
Springstein can take his suckey band, what’s it name, Steely Dan?, and stay in Jeyzey!
CC
I disagree with the Millennial’s hate Bruce assertion in the article. I came from North Jersey and my friend in NJ was not neccessarily a Millennial... more a Gen Xer... but his sister was on the cusp of Millenial status. There was a younger crowd that would hang out on the weekends and they wouldnget smashed on wine and patron and listen to this douchebag nonstop. It was so offputting. One time some asked me if I wanted to go see him at that Garden State (now PNC) Arts Center. I politely declined. Then I was asked why not, like there was a problem with not gushing over the dude. They insisted I explain myself... so I did and basically went off on him saying I have no desire to pay “an effing Communist” to sing badly. I was never asked again. SUCCESS!
ha Ha ha...I just read this. We must have been on the same page! LOL!
Anyway, I hate Bruce too, and have for at least 30 years.
And I’m a Boomer.
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