{"id":16365,"date":"2012-08-07T00:08:31","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T05:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=16365"},"modified":"2012-08-06T10:52:30","modified_gmt":"2012-08-06T15:52:30","slug":"qotd-the-musical-decline-of-bruce-springsteen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/08\/07\/qotd-the-musical-decline-of-bruce-springsteen\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The musical decline of Bruce Springsteen"},"content":{"rendered":"

The musical decline of Bruce Springsteen has been obvious for decades. The sanctimony, the grandiosity, the utterly formulaic monumentality; the witlessness; the tiresome recycling of those anthemic figures, each time more preposterously distended; the disappearance of intimacy and the rejection of softness. And the sexlessness: Remnick adores Springsteen for his \u201cflagrant exertion,\u201d which he finds deeply sensual, comparing him to James Brown, but Brown\u2019s shocking intensity, his gaudy stamina, his sea of sweat, was about, well, fucking, whereas Springsteen \u201cwants his audience to leave the arena, as he commands them, \u2018with your hands hurting, your feet hurting, your back hurting, your voice sore, and your sexual organs stimulated<\/em>!\u2019\u201d, which is how you talk dirty at Whole Foods. Remnick lauds him also for his \u201cexuberance,\u201d which is indeed preternatural. I was twice at The Bottom Line in August 1975 and I have never been in a happier room. But there is nothing daft or insouciant, nothing crazy free, about Springsteen\u2019s exuberance anymore. The joy is programmatic; it is mere uplift, another expression of social responsibility, a further statement of an idealism that borders on illusion. The rising? Not quite yet. We take care of our own? No, we do not. Nothing has damaged Springsteen\u2019s once-magnificent music more than his decision to become a spokesman for America. He is Howard Zinn with a guitar. The wounded workers in his songs do not have the authenticity of acquaintance; they are pious hackneyed tropes, stereotypical class martyrs from Guthrie and Steinbeck. Springsteen\u2019s sympathy is genuine, but his people are not. His 9\/11 and recession songs are bloated editorials: \u201cwhere\u2019s the promise from sea to shining sea?\u201d His anger that \u201cthe banker man grows fat\u201d is too holy: \u201cif I had a gun, I\u2019d find the bastards and shoot \u2018em on sight\u201d is not a \u201cliberal insistence.\u201d I prefer Dodd-Frank. The drawl in his voice is a production value, the grit a mannerism. A few minutes with one of Johnny Cash\u2019s last records and it is impossible to take Springsteen\u2019s vernacular seriously.<\/p>\n

Leon Wieseltier, “Washington Diarist: A Saint in the City”, The New Republic<\/em><\/a>, 2012-08-01<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The musical decline of Bruce Springsteen has been obvious for decades. The sanctimony, the grandiosity, the utterly formulaic monumentality; the witlessness; the tiresome recycling of those anthemic figures, each time more preposterously distended; the disappearance of intimacy and the rejection of softness. And the sexlessness: Remnick adores Springsteen for his \u201cflagrant exertion,\u201d which he finds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,41,13],"tags":[86,200],"class_list":["post-16365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-criticism","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4fX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16366,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16365\/revisions\/16366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}