Replies

I’ll defend him a bit.

IIRC, I was a junior in HS when Born in the USA came out. Springsteen was already popular with many in my high school, but that album was the background of my last summer of freedom - the next summer I’d be working two jobs to pay for the coming first semester of college - because it was played constantly everywhere. A lot of the lyrics resonated with those of us growing up in small town America, along with what John Cougar was putting out at the time, and it was a bit of fresh air musically having just gone through the New Wave era especially if you weren’t into the Metal bands that were gaining popularity. Remember, there was no Internet then - you basically got to hear whatever the radio played unless you wanted to spend a fortune on records or cassettes. As a teen, clubs and concerts were basically out of reach.

I don’t know if it will stand the test of time, but it seems to me to be loads better than anything I’ve heard played on the radio in recent memory (looking at you TayTay).

That said, I grew less fond of his music after BITUSA and found nuggets on the older albums more interesting. His politics suck, but I don’t expect to buy anything he puts out anyhow. I have a lot of great memories for which he was the default background singer and I’m OK with that.

I find myself listening to him every few years for a bit. There was a long time when I didn’t listen to anything he did because BITUSA was so overplayed when I was young, but his music and lyrics still do speak to various times of my young life, sometimes bad and sometimes good.