Hard to be humble when your net worth is $1.1 Billion. Hey, somebody call Bernie. John Cougar/Mellencamp walked off the stage after 2 songs a while back from getting heckled about his anti Trump rhetoric.
I saw him many years ago. I was surprised at how really tiny he is. At first,I had no idea it was him, I thought he was a female backup singer, until he went to the Mike and started singing.
Coming from nowhere gives a clue to what he thinks of his base. JD Vance, Yale educated, and proud hillbilly would not call his background people ‘nowhere’
re: vance, let's not idolize him too quickly. with his sterline education and now big-shot status, one might reasonably expect him to see thru the execrable T. Carlson & Co. Either he's a fool or an opportunist. Isn't being v.p. enough of a charge? does he really think well of himself when he looks in the mirror? beware of getting what you wish for in '28.
Great picture of you, Sasha, with the poster. I too, along with so many others, was a HUGE fan.
He's an embarrassment now with his TDS. If Springsteen wanted to remain relevant, he should have just sat it out starting about 2015 and rested on his generous laurels. Then he might have been remembered favorably.
I do find it amazing that someone who could write the way he did can be such an empty-headed douche now.
This is a great chance for me to remind everyone that Bruce Springsteen sucks as a musician. Musically his stuff is awful, especially his earlier work where the musicians were often not even in tune. I know he was/is popular, but I never got it. Compositionally, musically and vocally all of his work is subpar. On top of that his faux working class schtick is annoying and off putting. If you want a rock documentary to watch, I highly recommend the recent Netflix film on Led Zeppelin.
Karen Carpenter had the most remarkable singing voice I have ever heard, male or female. I was lucky enough to get to listen to her songs on the radio as they were released.
Excellent point. Thank you. Seems like there are several highly accomplished drummers -- both contemporaries of Carpenter and thereafter -- who echo your comment.
One of the treasures I discovered online is vocal coaches and analysts on YouTube who taught me precisely why voices like KC's and Judy Garland's were so unique and special - and find some shamefully forgotten stars like Vikki Carr.
People like Fil Henley will show you using a graph exactly why those voices are so good, even if you didn't have the musical ear to pick it otherwise.
It will be interesting to follow up on the more logical why's of the appeal of Karen Carpenter's remarkable voice, classified as contralto, if I remember correctly. Would you please send along a You Tube link with the coaches and analysts discussion you refer to above? Thanks, Mr. Roth.
Thanks, Pacificus! Sad to say, given the other music coming out at the time, I did not appreciate Karen Carpenter as much then as I did after her death in the early 1980s and going forward. As I listen now, partly with a bit more wisdom (I hope) and a better musical year, she shines on even more brightly.
Two tunes resonate for me more than the others: Sometimes, and, at the top of the list, Superstar. Boy, talking about doing Leon Russell and Bonnie Bramlett proud!
Same for me... not a big fan of KC back then, but I got it later in life. "Merry Christmas Darling" brings tears to my eyes every time.. It's prompts an emotional catharsis in me unlike any other song I've ever heard. RIP, Karen. All these years later, you are still loved.
I went down a rabbit hole one day after listening to some rock based YouTube and there was this set of videos of people listening to the carpenters for the first time and it’s just amazing because they have no idea what real music sounds like and let me just say that these would be people that like rap,much younger demographic,
And the awe that you can see on their faces while listening to her was very heartbreaking because number one we lost her so young and number two there’s nobody like her
We were lucky to be around and listen to it on the radio(just like that song) 🎵
I never got it either. I resented his fame and popularity and all the fawning. So I would only refer to him as Spruce Stringbean. (I was working in the woods as a logger at the time and well Spruce is a type of tree and it made sense in my still developing brain.) Anyway I would do awful Stringbean parodies, making my voice crack as I belted out my version of his tunes. It was very passive aggressive. He never seemed to notice the mockery, nor could I detect any drop in his popularity, but now that his movie flopped I’m thinking maybe the tiny butterfly flappings all those years ago might have fanned the flames and grown into a hurricane of apathy that swept over his pretentious movie. You never know…..
Thank you. On the subject of hype and weird promo things, I am old enough to recollect an experience which will be alien to the young folks: a newsstand with paper and ink magazines displayed on it, for sale. Specifically -- and notoriously -- on Oct 27 1975, more than 50 years ago, two major weekly mags, Time and Newsweek, BOTH had covers depicting young Bruce. It is hard to describe the prominence of these mags at the time, and impossible to exaggerate how utterly unlikely this was as a journalistic effort. War breaks out, men land on the moon, a new president or pope, OK I can see both covers carrying that. But a mediocre 25-year old with a bad band and only three albums released? Hyperhype. And it has never stopped.
It was actually the new Dylan. I think one of those magazine covers even lauded him as the new Bob Dylan. But you're right about the hype. I lived through the Born in the USA era. It was dialed up to 11.
Southside Johnny could sing. So could Mink DeVille. Springsteen sounds like he’s passing a stone. Interestingly, both Little Steven and Springsteen were involved w both Southside Johnny & Mink DeVille, in the production and sound.
Agreed about the faux working class schtick, but this is WAY off-base, a massively ignorant comment concerning the music he has made. He was an extraordinary songwriter, and his live show was astoundingly powerful, for decades.
Nothing "subpar" about him other than his morality, his self-awareness, and his intellect.
I think “subpar” is s silly and thoughtless word to describe the work of a figure of Springsteen’s enduring cultural significance. You cannot do what he has done over the past half-century—or, from the early 70s to the early 90s anyway—with "subpar" music.
It’s not about opinion. "Subpar", which means "below average", would be a measure of quality as compared with his peers. Probably the negative comments about his music are more about taste, and perhaps misunderstanding his musical genre. I can’t stand the music of Michael Jackson, and apparently he was a true sicko/pedo, but he was similarly (to Springsteen) a massively successful songwriter/performer of immense cultural significance. Whatever I think of him or his music, he’s not “subpar”. More like "annoying", to my ear.
You're correct, that's not an accurate description. I'd say (and I'm not including all the songs he wrote, because I'm not familiar enough with them) my personal description is "lacking talent". I just never got into his songs and his hoarse, screaming voice much at all and didn't think they were that great. But I think there's a big handful of songs that the Beatles did that weren't that great, too and the same goes for some other "big names".
A very good friend of ours is a big Jersey boy and loved, loved, loved Bruce. He had four tickets for a show in Virginia Beach a few years back. Something happened and he couldn't go. We had heard about Bruce's 3-hour+ torture events and panicked when our buddy called and offered us the tickets for free. We came up with some reasonable sounding excuse and begged off.
Later, he told us in utter disbelief that NONE OF HIS FRIENDS WANTED THE TICKETS, NOT EVEN FOR FREE!!! We feigned astonishment. Other than poor Kev, no one in our circle of friends and acquaintances would have taken them, either, except to maybe scalp them outside the venue.
Regardless of how good his music is, he still would not have become the phenomenon that he did without the insane media hype. He would have no doubt had a following in NJ, sold a lot of records, been moderately successful, but he would have been playing venues like the Chicago Theater to this day, not Soldier Field. And he wouldn't be a billionaire.
There are many, many other artists who are also massively talented, but have never had anywhere near the level of success he has, because they didn't have that hype machine.
Jackson also worked with some of the best studio musicians of all time - Toto. Jackson also had possibly the best producer working on his sound. Like him, or not, Jackson’s albums all featured some of the best musicianship and mixing. Springsteen? Yeah…not so much.
I’m not a MJ fan, but appreciate musicianship and chops, as well as production value. Springsteen is fairly middle of the road in those regards.
“Cultural significance” means exactly jack s$&t to musicians. It’s about the music.
He also had a knack for getting great guest musicians to perform solos on his albums like Eddie Van Halen and Slash. And Billy Idol's guitarist, can't think of the name, who played on Dirty Diana. Steve Stevens I think?
Yes I know about MJ's productions and the musicianship of the Toto guys. The 80s featured many acts that took studio music to a whole new level.
I think anyone interested in the popular music of the past half-century can come to appreciate and admire things that are mostly separate from each other, and yet still connected. I think it's important to think about what things you value and pay attention to, whenever you evaluate a musical artist.
One is SINGING--some ppl in this thread say Tom Jones is great but Springsteen sucks. OK, but Tom Jones had to sing other people's songs. Some songwriters are also phenomenal singers, like Freddie Mercury and David Bowie. Or Joni Mitchell.
Another is SONGWRITING. MJ and Springsteen each wrote a number of monster hits. If you hate Bruce or don't like his voice, listen to others who cover his songs, like Patti Smith's "Because the Night" or The Poynter Sisters' version of his "Fire". Tons of other people have covered his songs, because they are phenomenal songs.
And then there is recording studio PRODUCTION. No question, MJ's Quincy Jones production and the musicianship of session men like the Toto guys is fantastic. Toto themselves did phenomenal work on their own songs, such as "Rosanna". Springsteen's early work in the studio was pretty rough-edged, kind of the sense of a live performance. That was intentional.
And yet another is LIVE PERFORMANCE. This was something Springsteen and his band excelled at. Some bands aren't all that great live, however good their songs or however skillful they are at singing and playing instruments. Live performance is a charisma thing and also a product of the interplay among bandmates and the interplay with the audience.
So sometimes in discussions like this people are talking across each other because they value one of these categories over another and assume its preeminence, or perhaps they don't recognize that any performer can be evaluated along any of these dimensions.
I was a big fan but drifted away gradually over the course of decades. His dad was working class and his early work channeled some of that working class desperation. But vast wealth followed success and he lost touch with the sensibilities that fueled a lot of that early success. His liberalism - once implicit - became overt and obnoxious. Such a shame - he’s the DeNiro of musicians - a faded and bitter genius resting on ancient laurels.
I'd say that nothing he's done after his first two albums, even Born To Run, is up to the par of Greetings From Asbury Park, and The Wild The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle.
Every song had a vocal range of about 8 notes. Boring as shit. But I have to admit to loving “I’m on Fire” not for the vocals as much as the atmosphere of the song.
Eight unique notes would be a very typical number for a typical pop song melody. Many great songs have fewer. Also, the range of melody notes for most pop songs is within a single octave, or maybe an octave and a third (like C to the E in the next octave up).
Interesting details — I’m not so sure about most songs staying within that range but I’ll go with it. My main point, if I may elaborate more precisely, is that even with the range of the usual 8 notes of an octave (if that many) his arrangements are droning, overly repetitive and very predictable. His voice is nasal and his inflections are strained. I’m aware he’s not an opera singer but he is one of the most boring rock stars, vocally. (His band, however, is tight and talented.) Others have managed to arrange those few notes into wonderful melodies. Springsteen, not so much.
True, he's not really a melodist. His songs typically rely on strong movement of chord progressions with a simple but very emotionally gritty melody overlaid. "Born to Run" is a great example.
Beatles music reveals this idea pretty clearly: of the Lennon-McCartney credited songs, essentially all were written by one or the other. McCartney was an amazing melodist--he would often write catchy and distinctively memorable melodies over very simple chord changes (e.g. Eleanor Rigby), while many of Lennon's best songs had unremarkable melodies overlaid on more complex and interesting chord changes (e.g. I Am the Walrus).
Lennon could also sometimes invent a great melody over very uneventful chord patterns, as in Norwegian Wood, but I think that for most of his songs, the melody wasn't notable or interesting in its own right. He was also quite a great wordsmith however, so sometimes the lyrics were so compelling that you'd never even think much about the quality of the melody.
But, back to Springsteen: his anthemic songs (Born to Run, Thunder Road e.g.) derive their extraordinary power from the emotional force of the underlying instrumentation and the expressiveness and imagery of the vocals. McCartney's O-Bla-di O bla-da is a much more "melodic" song than Thunder Road, but it's got no "guts". It's happy and playful. Springsteen rarely went for happy and playful.
It's nothing great sonically, but a couple of those early albums deliver a lot of great songs. He was something else live back in the day, too. Then his lib mind virus took over . . .
It's amusing how Springsteen was the critics' darling right out of the gate, while they loved to beat up on Zeppelin even though they were the most popular band in the world at the time. BS was basically a creation of the media. Not to say he didn't have talent as a songwriter and performer. I've seen him in concert and even I can't deny that. But I wonder if he would have gone as far as he did without the media hype. When Born To Run came out he was on the covers of Newsweek and Time the same week.
Zeppelin, meanwhile, had almost the entire rock press against them, were all but ignored by the mainstream media of the time, yet broke attendance records everywhere and had the Number One requested song on the radio for over a decade. All the while never trying to push politics on their fans. Hell that's probably why the press hated them.
Led Zeppelin was smart- eschew the political stuff and sing about hobbits and being dazed and confused. Imagine the same band they did Dazed and Confused would record the song -All of my Love a decade later.
Musicians out of tune in the E Street band? You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. If you don’t like his music - fine, but you will not find a more talented, committed to excellence and hard working band. FYI - the opening riff in Glory Days is out of tune on purpose, if you’ve seen the video - they’re portraying a local nothing bar band.
I actually thought his first two albums were his best. But I also preferred Bob Dylan in his 1960's era. I haven't heard any of BS' music after "Born to Run."
I like that one, too, mainly because of "Tangled Up in Blue." I believe that was his comeback album after his motorcycle crash. I know several others came out after "Another Side of Bob Dylan," but that was his first new material after he was fully recovered.
Blood on the Tracks was his divorce album. That's why it's so incredibly great. My fave Dylan album, and it includes my fave Dylan song, "If You See Her Say Hello".
All a matter of taste. I think Dylan is a 3 note nasal wonder. Boring, I saw him at Wolf Trap where I went to see Kris Kristoffersen who had surprisingly slipped in popularity at that time and was the opening act. I LOVED Kris for years UNTIL only a couple of us went backstage for a photo op and only a couple people were there. Shockingly, Kris was rude and dismissive and I never felt the same about him. Musicians are just people with a modicum of talent except for my personal favorites, Whitney Houston and Sir Tom Jones...they have/had voices.
You admire fantastic singers. But neither Houston nor TJ was a songwriter. Dylan and Springsteen were exceptional songwriters.
I saw Dylan live once, and he sucked. 1976, playing with The Band. The Band was awesome. Dylan seemed remote, and the versions he played of his familiar songs that night were almost unrecognizable to the audience. It was like he didn't give a shit what people hoped to hear.
Sorry to hear that about Kris. I thought he was a decent guy.
They don't have to write to be a fabulous singer/performer...Springsteen was a blue collar screamer writing some kind of lyrics that apparently appealed to certain mindsets which is fine but he's still yapping about Trump and he needs to go away. I am not sure what Dylan's gig is but as I said, yuck. I liked Ozzy better than them and I'm a 50s gal so you know that doesn't segue into metal. Ozzy was amusing and entertaining at least.
I would disagree that Springsteen has no talent. I think he’s a good songwriter with a lousy voice, and his phony persona (being genuine, and down with the working class) is a joke. Many of his best songs were not hits, IMO, and his acoustic songs (e.g., on Nebraska and Tunnel of Love) are his best. However, he did write what I regard as one of the greatest classic rock songs of all time: Blinded by the Light — that is, as performed in Manfred Mann’s cover version. Bruce’s original version is lame.
With all of that being said, I agree he’s somewhat of a fraud, and his Trump hatred really gets tiresome. He has an annoying personality. You couldn’t pay me to go watch his movie.
I used to be a big Springsteen fan, but then, about 2015, Chris Christy, while governor, praised Bruce like he was the second coming @ a NJ concert, and Springsteen responded with a big public F*** You - didn’t make sense at the time, still doesn’t, seemed like a cheap shot. Sad.
A lot of celebrities, if I recall, took money at the time to promote the jab. I wouldn’t be surprised if Springsteen did.
I was just reading your note out loud, as I was on the phone with my husband. He said, you can add that Springsteen became the “Great Moaner” after his first album, following in the footsteps of Dylan.
Ha!
I still don’t get the disconnect — that someone can be such a good storyteller through song and write lyrics that have such insight and capture a mood, personality … and be so disconnected from the reality of what’s happening in the world. Ditto a couple of my other favorites singer/songwriters from an earlier period — Joni Mitchell and Neil Young.
Maybe it’s because he’s been in a rarified bubble since he was 24 or so. Or maybe he was always a fraud and really couldn’t care less about his fans. Maybe a little of both. Sad.
He's been a left-wing loudmouth idiot since the 80s. This isn't new. Except he went from being a musician who occasionally spouted off about politics, to basically a political proselytizer who occasionally plays songs between hectoring.
I remember him exhorting Trump to "put on a fucking mask" back in 2020. How does the guy who sang about being born to run and rebelling against authority turn into such an establishment tool? He needs to release a new song called "Get Off My Lawn."
People are good with political statements delivered through music. The problem was him joining the cool kids on the left. I always assumed all of the artists and actors were left-wing, and I never cared. I still don't now except for the ones that are so righteous that they have to lecture us, encourage boycotts, and rub it in our faces. Bruce joined that group, and many of us quit caring. Neil Young wanted Spotify to cancel Rogan for spreading COVID misinformation. People love artists that fight the man, but we all quit caring when the are The Man or join The Man in stomping us.
most "political statements" by songwriters are generic. They aren't personally targeted at a specific politician and therefore are acceptable. Who does not agree with Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" sentiments. Or Marvin Gaye singing about the tragedy of Vietnam with "What's Going On"? Even Country Joe & the Fish doing "Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" were just fine, even with conservative old me. THAT is song-writing. "Born to Run" was just another teenage rebellion song. Again, 100% of kids agree. Where did THAT Bruce Springsteen go.
You know where that Bruce went. He got older and famous and had kids. Even in Born in the USA he wrote a song Glory Days about the past. Marvin Gay wrote what was probably one of the top songs of the last 70 years but he was angry and high when he wrote it. After that he was too high to write anything more except Sexual Healing and then got killed because he was out of control.
Welfare and warfare it is the same scam, just two different targets. Targeting the empathetic and those anxious about security, respectively. The scam: Transfer private wealth into public hands and buy votes. Censorship is necessay to perpetuate the scam.
The cool kids are not on the left… the self-important kids are. The whiny, tempermental, spoiled, joyless, bitter kids who need a cause to feel like their life has meaning are not cool.
Who made Neil Young Covid Disinformation Czar? Did he ever play the part of a virologist or an immunologist or even an infectious disease specialist??? I don’t think so. He’s a musician. He needs to stay in his lane and let the likes of Sean Penn do the heavy lifting.
I think Neil was after Spotify only because they paid Rogan $100M or whatever it was. Anyway, as half-baked as Springsteen's views are, Young's are even worse.
Ironically, the "misinformation" turned out to be true.
Neil is a douche. I saw him do an acoustic show once. I grabbed a beer in the lobby and was stopped by the usher, who told me the artist (douche) has requested that no liquor be allowed inside the venue. WTF? I chugged about half and threw the other half in the trash.
I get inside, and behind the stage is a list of rules, one of which was "no getting up during a song".
Here's the kicker: Neil walks onto the stage carrying a Sierra Nevada beer!!!
Somehow we indoctrinated our kids well enough with common sense they have stayed on the right side, even in Minnesota. It must be tough with many of their friends gone left. My grandkids are on the right track. My daughter is home-schooling and takes the grandkids to area farms for special field trips
Glad things are going correctly for you. Thank God!
After nearly 40 years on Active Duty (USAF and US Public Health Service), Girl Scouting, team sports, and most importantly, faith in her upbringing from birth, none of it stopped the transition left. Her husband works at a big university, that’s the issue. He has TDS worse than she does.
"Big University".... you mean indoctrination factory. That IS the problem. My kids did not make it through college and I didn't care. They did not need all that mind-control, and it wasn't as bad before 2010 as it is now.
Yes, I sent my kids to "college" and one has a masters degree= of course this is when it meant something. I said recently I would NOT send a child of mine to college today, I would send them to a trade school or to apprentice somewhere. Colleges are an indoctrination center for marxists and idiots who can't do anything besides get "tenured" at a college. Real life? Not a clue.
Sorry to hear. I worked in higher ed for a generation and was lucky enough to emerge and retire intact. Of course I was in a very technical area and not the squishy, feely foggy bottom of the humanities. Hell, several of us even worked on the Trump campaigns of 2020 and 2024.
Glad I was a student in the mid-70s. You could get a glimpse of the coming veer to the left but most professors were no-nonsense WW2 and Korea types. Now, I would not recommend it, especially for young, bright minds.
This is so sad. We are lucky enough that our kids and grands are filled with common sense. Sent our kids and grands to parochial grade schools and then warned them about indoctrination happening at high schools and colleges. Go along with the BS to get a good grades but NEVER change your beliefs. So far it has worked.
I was like you Sasha, a teenager when my Springsteen fandom began. Loved him!!!! We started with Greetings from Asbury Park and The Wild the Innocent, and then it was off to the races. He really went off the rails with Obama, as so so many celebrities did. I was losing interest by then anyway just due to age & life stages, but boy howdy, when the TDS began he totally lost me. Except for a very few old favorites, I won’t even listen to his music anymore. He almost matched Robert De Niro in the TDS category, and that guy was frothing at the mouth!
What an embarrassment these "Entertainers" are. They are the biggest hypocritical narcissists on the planet.
The greatest country in the world all gave them their opportunities to succeed, become wealthy and never have to work another day in their life.
YET, they need to constantly be in the spotlight. If I had made the money these people made I would retire, spend as much time with my family as I possibly can.
I wouldn't be going on the news ranting TDS hatred and stupidity.
My favorites are the anti-capitalist entertainers, as if there's a lot of money to be made under all of the socialist and communist regimes of the world.
You mean like Jane Fonda? Born with a silver spoon from her parents; naturally resentful of the system that provided her with that spoon; but would do anything to be part of that system, including softcore porn (Barbarella) and now resents the system that provided for her Malibu home and friendship with buddies like Barbra Streisand. You mean that confused, sad, psychopath?
That's because you have a brain and common sense as we all do. I avoid the subject with the nutjobs in my family, they are crazed. I am too old for that insanity.
Bruce is one of Rock's false prophets. A Billionaire who talks about his working class hero persona as if it were real. His music is full of musical cliches, and his lyrics are full of lyric cliches. The tracks he produces are very square--no groove. The arrogance of his album of Motown hits is insulting to the memory of Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson and to the Commodores and all the other musicians and singers.
And what is with the permanent orange tan glow he wears?
And what can you say about a man who writes working class hero songs but flies his daughter's horse to the European horse shows in a private jet?
Maybe it's me but I just have a hard time believing people that are 100 millionaire can claim to speak for [us] average working people. I just don't pay attention to what they say. This doesn't mean I don't enjoy the music or the art or the performance but I just wish they would stop preaching from their mansions.
Phila / South Jersey deplorable here. We grew up listening to Springsteen in the 70's and 80's, he was one of us. We were proud of the guy. I could not believe it when he was on the cover of the NY Times magazine after Trump won in 2016 saying he was so distraught because he didn't sway more of his fans to vote for Hillary. It was like being kicked in the gut. He was playing us all along. He can go hang out with the other phoney Howard Stern. They deserve each other.
Look at you in that picture.... I was in high school in the 80's. Hard to believe it's that long ago and even harder to believe the changes in life, politics, technology, and culture we are dealing with now. I don't know whether to be optimistic or pessimistic for the balance of my years on this little planet.
The Left, rather poetically, has delivered him to nowhere.
He delivered himself to nowhere.
Isn’t the title the clue to how Springsteen has lost his own purpose? When one says they come from nowhere (vs working class NJ) it is telling.
Beware those caught up in delusions of grandeur.
Hard to be humble when your net worth is $1.1 Billion. Hey, somebody call Bernie. John Cougar/Mellencamp walked off the stage after 2 songs a while back from getting heckled about his anti Trump rhetoric.
Mellencamp is another overpaid/overrated chump.
a chump in a slump, tho -
I saw him many years ago. I was surprised at how really tiny he is. At first,I had no idea it was him, I thought he was a female backup singer, until he went to the Mike and started singing.
He loves doing corporate outings, LoL
Delusions of adequacy.
I call him Mr. Monotone. Or perhaps Old Yeller.
McCartney will be remembered long after Springsteen is forgotten.
Here's something I should have said ...
Volume in vocals is no substitute for merit in melodies.
"all my troubles seemed so far away"
"take a sad SONG"
" ... picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been"
Coming from nowhere gives a clue to what he thinks of his base. JD Vance, Yale educated, and proud hillbilly would not call his background people ‘nowhere’
People.
Good point!
Thank you
re: vance, let's not idolize him too quickly. with his sterline education and now big-shot status, one might reasonably expect him to see thru the execrable T. Carlson & Co. Either he's a fool or an opportunist. Isn't being v.p. enough of a charge? does he really think well of himself when he looks in the mirror? beware of getting what you wish for in '28.
Idolize? Who said anything about that? I was contrasting him with a poser.
Springfield has been a jackass his entire life. I never bought in to his self-hype machine.
🤣😂
👍
Great picture of you, Sasha, with the poster. I too, along with so many others, was a HUGE fan.
He's an embarrassment now with his TDS. If Springsteen wanted to remain relevant, he should have just sat it out starting about 2015 and rested on his generous laurels. Then he might have been remembered favorably.
I do find it amazing that someone who could write the way he did can be such an empty-headed douche now.
This is a great chance for me to remind everyone that Bruce Springsteen sucks as a musician. Musically his stuff is awful, especially his earlier work where the musicians were often not even in tune. I know he was/is popular, but I never got it. Compositionally, musically and vocally all of his work is subpar. On top of that his faux working class schtick is annoying and off putting. If you want a rock documentary to watch, I highly recommend the recent Netflix film on Led Zeppelin.
Spring who? Give me Karen and Richard Carpenter any day. Now THEY are class musicians.
Karen Carpenter had the most remarkable singing voice I have ever heard, male or female. I was lucky enough to get to listen to her songs on the radio as they were released.
Few people are aware that she was a killer on drums as well. A drummers drummer.
Excellent point. Thank you. Seems like there are several highly accomplished drummers -- both contemporaries of Carpenter and thereafter -- who echo your comment.
and still the producers called in Hal Blaine.
One of the treasures I discovered online is vocal coaches and analysts on YouTube who taught me precisely why voices like KC's and Judy Garland's were so unique and special - and find some shamefully forgotten stars like Vikki Carr.
People like Fil Henley will show you using a graph exactly why those voices are so good, even if you didn't have the musical ear to pick it otherwise.
It will be interesting to follow up on the more logical why's of the appeal of Karen Carpenter's remarkable voice, classified as contralto, if I remember correctly. Would you please send along a You Tube link with the coaches and analysts discussion you refer to above? Thanks, Mr. Roth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRIobV7CRks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F27FN_L4uyM
Enjoy
Right on, Paul. And I thought I was the only lover of Karen Carpenter left. She sang with more feeling than anyone, past, present, or(?) future.
Thanks, Pacificus! Sad to say, given the other music coming out at the time, I did not appreciate Karen Carpenter as much then as I did after her death in the early 1980s and going forward. As I listen now, partly with a bit more wisdom (I hope) and a better musical year, she shines on even more brightly.
Two tunes resonate for me more than the others: Sometimes, and, at the top of the list, Superstar. Boy, talking about doing Leon Russell and Bonnie Bramlett proud!
Same for me... not a big fan of KC back then, but I got it later in life. "Merry Christmas Darling" brings tears to my eyes every time.. It's prompts an emotional catharsis in me unlike any other song I've ever heard. RIP, Karen. All these years later, you are still loved.
Emmylou Harris was & is special, too.
Only Yesterday was one that got under my defenses - - -
I liked Bonnie Bramlett, too. I liked what she did with Delaney. Their work with Eric Clapton was very good. With Carl Radle & Bobby Whitlock.
She literally had the voice of an angel.
Many, many musicians greatly respect her. The jerk who made the movie about her with Barbie dolls should be so ashamed.
Glad I missed whatever waste of celluloid that was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstar:_The_Karen_Carpenter_Story
I went down a rabbit hole one day after listening to some rock based YouTube and there was this set of videos of people listening to the carpenters for the first time and it’s just amazing because they have no idea what real music sounds like and let me just say that these would be people that like rap,much younger demographic,
And the awe that you can see on their faces while listening to her was very heartbreaking because number one we lost her so young and number two there’s nobody like her
We were lucky to be around and listen to it on the radio(just like that song) 🎵
Oh my God I love those "reaction" videos on YT with the young people listening to the classic artists! They have them for almost every big act.
used one of their songs for our first dance oh so many years ago!
Ooh. Which one? My guess is 'For All We Know.'
nope! "we've only just begun"!
Of course. Silly me!
This, exactly. Springsteen has NEVER been anything but some weird promo thing. Never got it
I never got it either. I resented his fame and popularity and all the fawning. So I would only refer to him as Spruce Stringbean. (I was working in the woods as a logger at the time and well Spruce is a type of tree and it made sense in my still developing brain.) Anyway I would do awful Stringbean parodies, making my voice crack as I belted out my version of his tunes. It was very passive aggressive. He never seemed to notice the mockery, nor could I detect any drop in his popularity, but now that his movie flopped I’m thinking maybe the tiny butterfly flappings all those years ago might have fanned the flames and grown into a hurricane of apathy that swept over his pretentious movie. You never know…..
Thank you. On the subject of hype and weird promo things, I am old enough to recollect an experience which will be alien to the young folks: a newsstand with paper and ink magazines displayed on it, for sale. Specifically -- and notoriously -- on Oct 27 1975, more than 50 years ago, two major weekly mags, Time and Newsweek, BOTH had covers depicting young Bruce. It is hard to describe the prominence of these mags at the time, and impossible to exaggerate how utterly unlikely this was as a journalistic effort. War breaks out, men land on the moon, a new president or pope, OK I can see both covers carrying that. But a mediocre 25-year old with a bad band and only three albums released? Hyperhype. And it has never stopped.
You’re right. He was hyped to the max. I always wondered why. It didn’t seem organic to me. They declared him to be the next Beatles.
It was actually the new Dylan. I think one of those magazine covers even lauded him as the new Bob Dylan. But you're right about the hype. I lived through the Born in the USA era. It was dialed up to 11.
I preferred Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.
Absolutely! Saw them many times at the Agora in Cleveland.
Southside Johnny could sing. So could Mink DeVille. Springsteen sounds like he’s passing a stone. Interestingly, both Little Steven and Springsteen were involved w both Southside Johnny & Mink DeVille, in the production and sound.
Yup, I never liked his music. And the Led Zeppelin film rocked!
Agreed about the faux working class schtick, but this is WAY off-base, a massively ignorant comment concerning the music he has made. He was an extraordinary songwriter, and his live show was astoundingly powerful, for decades.
Nothing "subpar" about him other than his morality, his self-awareness, and his intellect.
To each their own opinion and I’ll go with those who found him subpar.
I think “subpar” is s silly and thoughtless word to describe the work of a figure of Springsteen’s enduring cultural significance. You cannot do what he has done over the past half-century—or, from the early 70s to the early 90s anyway—with "subpar" music.
It’s not about opinion. "Subpar", which means "below average", would be a measure of quality as compared with his peers. Probably the negative comments about his music are more about taste, and perhaps misunderstanding his musical genre. I can’t stand the music of Michael Jackson, and apparently he was a true sicko/pedo, but he was similarly (to Springsteen) a massively successful songwriter/performer of immense cultural significance. Whatever I think of him or his music, he’s not “subpar”. More like "annoying", to my ear.
subpar, annoying, frightful, etc. etc. You can love him if you like, many of us wouldn't give a nickel to see or hear him so let it go, is my opinion.
You're correct, that's not an accurate description. I'd say (and I'm not including all the songs he wrote, because I'm not familiar enough with them) my personal description is "lacking talent". I just never got into his songs and his hoarse, screaming voice much at all and didn't think they were that great. But I think there's a big handful of songs that the Beatles did that weren't that great, too and the same goes for some other "big names".
I have to share this.
A very good friend of ours is a big Jersey boy and loved, loved, loved Bruce. He had four tickets for a show in Virginia Beach a few years back. Something happened and he couldn't go. We had heard about Bruce's 3-hour+ torture events and panicked when our buddy called and offered us the tickets for free. We came up with some reasonable sounding excuse and begged off.
Later, he told us in utter disbelief that NONE OF HIS FRIENDS WANTED THE TICKETS, NOT EVEN FOR FREE!!! We feigned astonishment. Other than poor Kev, no one in our circle of friends and acquaintances would have taken them, either, except to maybe scalp them outside the venue.
Springsteen’s voice wasn’t good at all. It was average at best even for average people. But for a superstar, it was terrible.
Regardless of how good his music is, he still would not have become the phenomenon that he did without the insane media hype. He would have no doubt had a following in NJ, sold a lot of records, been moderately successful, but he would have been playing venues like the Chicago Theater to this day, not Soldier Field. And he wouldn't be a billionaire.
There are many, many other artists who are also massively talented, but have never had anywhere near the level of success he has, because they didn't have that hype machine.
Jackson also worked with some of the best studio musicians of all time - Toto. Jackson also had possibly the best producer working on his sound. Like him, or not, Jackson’s albums all featured some of the best musicianship and mixing. Springsteen? Yeah…not so much.
I’m not a MJ fan, but appreciate musicianship and chops, as well as production value. Springsteen is fairly middle of the road in those regards.
“Cultural significance” means exactly jack s$&t to musicians. It’s about the music.
He also had a knack for getting great guest musicians to perform solos on his albums like Eddie Van Halen and Slash. And Billy Idol's guitarist, can't think of the name, who played on Dirty Diana. Steve Stevens I think?
Yes I know about MJ's productions and the musicianship of the Toto guys. The 80s featured many acts that took studio music to a whole new level.
I think anyone interested in the popular music of the past half-century can come to appreciate and admire things that are mostly separate from each other, and yet still connected. I think it's important to think about what things you value and pay attention to, whenever you evaluate a musical artist.
One is SINGING--some ppl in this thread say Tom Jones is great but Springsteen sucks. OK, but Tom Jones had to sing other people's songs. Some songwriters are also phenomenal singers, like Freddie Mercury and David Bowie. Or Joni Mitchell.
Another is SONGWRITING. MJ and Springsteen each wrote a number of monster hits. If you hate Bruce or don't like his voice, listen to others who cover his songs, like Patti Smith's "Because the Night" or The Poynter Sisters' version of his "Fire". Tons of other people have covered his songs, because they are phenomenal songs.
And then there is recording studio PRODUCTION. No question, MJ's Quincy Jones production and the musicianship of session men like the Toto guys is fantastic. Toto themselves did phenomenal work on their own songs, such as "Rosanna". Springsteen's early work in the studio was pretty rough-edged, kind of the sense of a live performance. That was intentional.
And yet another is LIVE PERFORMANCE. This was something Springsteen and his band excelled at. Some bands aren't all that great live, however good their songs or however skillful they are at singing and playing instruments. Live performance is a charisma thing and also a product of the interplay among bandmates and the interplay with the audience.
So sometimes in discussions like this people are talking across each other because they value one of these categories over another and assume its preeminence, or perhaps they don't recognize that any performer can be evaluated along any of these dimensions.
I was a big fan but drifted away gradually over the course of decades. His dad was working class and his early work channeled some of that working class desperation. But vast wealth followed success and he lost touch with the sensibilities that fueled a lot of that early success. His liberalism - once implicit - became overt and obnoxious. Such a shame - he’s the DeNiro of musicians - a faded and bitter genius resting on ancient laurels.
I'd say that nothing he's done after his first two albums, even Born To Run, is up to the par of Greetings From Asbury Park, and The Wild The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle.
Spirit in the Night will always be my favorite.
All he did was scream…..there was nothing ‘musical’ about it.
Every song had a vocal range of about 8 notes. Boring as shit. But I have to admit to loving “I’m on Fire” not for the vocals as much as the atmosphere of the song.
Eight unique notes would be a very typical number for a typical pop song melody. Many great songs have fewer. Also, the range of melody notes for most pop songs is within a single octave, or maybe an octave and a third (like C to the E in the next octave up).
Interesting details — I’m not so sure about most songs staying within that range but I’ll go with it. My main point, if I may elaborate more precisely, is that even with the range of the usual 8 notes of an octave (if that many) his arrangements are droning, overly repetitive and very predictable. His voice is nasal and his inflections are strained. I’m aware he’s not an opera singer but he is one of the most boring rock stars, vocally. (His band, however, is tight and talented.) Others have managed to arrange those few notes into wonderful melodies. Springsteen, not so much.
True, he's not really a melodist. His songs typically rely on strong movement of chord progressions with a simple but very emotionally gritty melody overlaid. "Born to Run" is a great example.
Beatles music reveals this idea pretty clearly: of the Lennon-McCartney credited songs, essentially all were written by one or the other. McCartney was an amazing melodist--he would often write catchy and distinctively memorable melodies over very simple chord changes (e.g. Eleanor Rigby), while many of Lennon's best songs had unremarkable melodies overlaid on more complex and interesting chord changes (e.g. I Am the Walrus).
Lennon could also sometimes invent a great melody over very uneventful chord patterns, as in Norwegian Wood, but I think that for most of his songs, the melody wasn't notable or interesting in its own right. He was also quite a great wordsmith however, so sometimes the lyrics were so compelling that you'd never even think much about the quality of the melody.
But, back to Springsteen: his anthemic songs (Born to Run, Thunder Road e.g.) derive their extraordinary power from the emotional force of the underlying instrumentation and the expressiveness and imagery of the vocals. McCartney's O-Bla-di O bla-da is a much more "melodic" song than Thunder Road, but it's got no "guts". It's happy and playful. Springsteen rarely went for happy and playful.
I was not a fan but really liked "Glory days" and "Fire."
It's nothing great sonically, but a couple of those early albums deliver a lot of great songs. He was something else live back in the day, too. Then his lib mind virus took over . . .
It's amusing how Springsteen was the critics' darling right out of the gate, while they loved to beat up on Zeppelin even though they were the most popular band in the world at the time. BS was basically a creation of the media. Not to say he didn't have talent as a songwriter and performer. I've seen him in concert and even I can't deny that. But I wonder if he would have gone as far as he did without the media hype. When Born To Run came out he was on the covers of Newsweek and Time the same week.
Zeppelin, meanwhile, had almost the entire rock press against them, were all but ignored by the mainstream media of the time, yet broke attendance records everywhere and had the Number One requested song on the radio for over a decade. All the while never trying to push politics on their fans. Hell that's probably why the press hated them.
Landau’s darling.
Led Zeppelin was smart- eschew the political stuff and sing about hobbits and being dazed and confused. Imagine the same band they did Dazed and Confused would record the song -All of my Love a decade later.
I don't know Led Zeppelin's politics and I like it that way.
Musicians out of tune in the E Street band? You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. If you don’t like his music - fine, but you will not find a more talented, committed to excellence and hard working band. FYI - the opening riff in Glory Days is out of tune on purpose, if you’ve seen the video - they’re portraying a local nothing bar band.
I actually thought his first two albums were his best. But I also preferred Bob Dylan in his 1960's era. I haven't heard any of BS' music after "Born to Run."
I like Dylan material from the 60s, but my favorite album came out in 1975, Blood on the Tracks.
I like that one, too, mainly because of "Tangled Up in Blue." I believe that was his comeback album after his motorcycle crash. I know several others came out after "Another Side of Bob Dylan," but that was his first new material after he was fully recovered.
Blood on the Tracks was his divorce album. That's why it's so incredibly great. My fave Dylan album, and it includes my fave Dylan song, "If You See Her Say Hello".
No, his motorcycle crash was in 1966 and Blood on the Tracks was released in 1975.
John Wesley Harding. Highly underrated. But Bobby is the GOAT.
Yes; he had an 8-year recovery.
All a matter of taste. I think Dylan is a 3 note nasal wonder. Boring, I saw him at Wolf Trap where I went to see Kris Kristoffersen who had surprisingly slipped in popularity at that time and was the opening act. I LOVED Kris for years UNTIL only a couple of us went backstage for a photo op and only a couple people were there. Shockingly, Kris was rude and dismissive and I never felt the same about him. Musicians are just people with a modicum of talent except for my personal favorites, Whitney Houston and Sir Tom Jones...they have/had voices.
I saw Dylan at Wolf Trap, too, in the 1990s. It was one of those “twofer” shows. I came to see Santana. Dylan was painful.
You admire fantastic singers. But neither Houston nor TJ was a songwriter. Dylan and Springsteen were exceptional songwriters.
I saw Dylan live once, and he sucked. 1976, playing with The Band. The Band was awesome. Dylan seemed remote, and the versions he played of his familiar songs that night were almost unrecognizable to the audience. It was like he didn't give a shit what people hoped to hear.
Sorry to hear that about Kris. I thought he was a decent guy.
They don't have to write to be a fabulous singer/performer...Springsteen was a blue collar screamer writing some kind of lyrics that apparently appealed to certain mindsets which is fine but he's still yapping about Trump and he needs to go away. I am not sure what Dylan's gig is but as I said, yuck. I liked Ozzy better than them and I'm a 50s gal so you know that doesn't segue into metal. Ozzy was amusing and entertaining at least.
The first live concert I went to was Black Sabbath at the Palace Theater in Albany NY in 1975 when I was in 11th grade. That was quite an experience!
I would disagree that Springsteen has no talent. I think he’s a good songwriter with a lousy voice, and his phony persona (being genuine, and down with the working class) is a joke. Many of his best songs were not hits, IMO, and his acoustic songs (e.g., on Nebraska and Tunnel of Love) are his best. However, he did write what I regard as one of the greatest classic rock songs of all time: Blinded by the Light — that is, as performed in Manfred Mann’s cover version. Bruce’s original version is lame.
With all of that being said, I agree he’s somewhat of a fraud, and his Trump hatred really gets tiresome. He has an annoying personality. You couldn’t pay me to go watch his movie.
Wha'?
Amen to all of that, my brother.
"Empty-headed douche". Nice turn of phrase
Thank you. :)
Would that be wrapped up like a douche from the Blinded by the Light song?
I used to be a big Springsteen fan, but then, about 2015, Chris Christy, while governor, praised Bruce like he was the second coming @ a NJ concert, and Springsteen responded with a big public F*** You - didn’t make sense at the time, still doesn’t, seemed like a cheap shot. Sad.
I sent the article about Springsteen when it first came out to my friends and literally said, “fucking douche!” 😂
I began to become suspicious when he supported vaccine mandates.
A lot of celebrities, if I recall, took money at the time to promote the jab. I wouldn’t be surprised if Springsteen did.
I was just reading your note out loud, as I was on the phone with my husband. He said, you can add that Springsteen became the “Great Moaner” after his first album, following in the footsteps of Dylan.
Ha!
I still don’t get the disconnect — that someone can be such a good storyteller through song and write lyrics that have such insight and capture a mood, personality … and be so disconnected from the reality of what’s happening in the world. Ditto a couple of my other favorites singer/songwriters from an earlier period — Joni Mitchell and Neil Young.
Maybe it’s because he’s been in a rarified bubble since he was 24 or so. Or maybe he was always a fraud and really couldn’t care less about his fans. Maybe a little of both. Sad.
He's been a left-wing loudmouth idiot since the 80s. This isn't new. Except he went from being a musician who occasionally spouted off about politics, to basically a political proselytizer who occasionally plays songs between hectoring.
I remember him exhorting Trump to "put on a fucking mask" back in 2020. How does the guy who sang about being born to run and rebelling against authority turn into such an establishment tool? He needs to release a new song called "Get Off My Lawn."
love that you called him a douche.
I came here to say this - except probably not as well as you did.
Bruce long ago forgot the famous Michael Jordan quote, “Republicans buy sneakers too”
People are good with political statements delivered through music. The problem was him joining the cool kids on the left. I always assumed all of the artists and actors were left-wing, and I never cared. I still don't now except for the ones that are so righteous that they have to lecture us, encourage boycotts, and rub it in our faces. Bruce joined that group, and many of us quit caring. Neil Young wanted Spotify to cancel Rogan for spreading COVID misinformation. People love artists that fight the man, but we all quit caring when the are The Man or join The Man in stomping us.
Neil Young should have remembered a Southern man don’t need him around anyhow.
I cannot express how colossally disappointed I was in Neil Young when he pulled that bullshit...
And being pro vaxx with 2 autistic kids even...
I'm with you 100% on that one.
Hard to believe even.
Lynnyrd approves of this
Yeah, fuck Neil Young. I once respected him too. Turned out he was just another entitled, out-of-touch elitist with authoritarian impulses.
Someone should re-make the needle and the damage done about the COVID vx and shove his face in it.
Love that idea!!!
And even his pet project Farm Aid makes no sense. Those fuckers get more government handouts than anyone.
most "political statements" by songwriters are generic. They aren't personally targeted at a specific politician and therefore are acceptable. Who does not agree with Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" sentiments. Or Marvin Gaye singing about the tragedy of Vietnam with "What's Going On"? Even Country Joe & the Fish doing "Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" were just fine, even with conservative old me. THAT is song-writing. "Born to Run" was just another teenage rebellion song. Again, 100% of kids agree. Where did THAT Bruce Springsteen go.
You know where that Bruce went. He got older and famous and had kids. Even in Born in the USA he wrote a song Glory Days about the past. Marvin Gay wrote what was probably one of the top songs of the last 70 years but he was angry and high when he wrote it. After that he was too high to write anything more except Sexual Healing and then got killed because he was out of control.
Try to remember Marvin was murdered by his father, a whole other type of darkness
Still don't get why being on the left now means being in favor of censorship and government coercion as well as war?? What am I missing?
In the past you could be left, right, or center. But today, there are three political stances to take: conservative, globalist, and stupid.
Now that made me LOL!!
Welfare and warfare it is the same scam, just two different targets. Targeting the empathetic and those anxious about security, respectively. The scam: Transfer private wealth into public hands and buy votes. Censorship is necessay to perpetuate the scam.
Bingo. The jig is up, or should I say "their gig is up".
The cool kids are not on the left… the self-important kids are. The whiny, tempermental, spoiled, joyless, bitter kids who need a cause to feel like their life has meaning are not cool.
Who made Neil Young Covid Disinformation Czar? Did he ever play the part of a virologist or an immunologist or even an infectious disease specialist??? I don’t think so. He’s a musician. He needs to stay in his lane and let the likes of Sean Penn do the heavy lifting.
I think Neil was after Spotify only because they paid Rogan $100M or whatever it was. Anyway, as half-baked as Springsteen's views are, Young's are even worse.
Ironically, the "misinformation" turned out to be true.
Neil is a douche. I saw him do an acoustic show once. I grabbed a beer in the lobby and was stopped by the usher, who told me the artist (douche) has requested that no liquor be allowed inside the venue. WTF? I chugged about half and threw the other half in the trash.
I get inside, and behind the stage is a list of rules, one of which was "no getting up during a song".
Here's the kicker: Neil walks onto the stage carrying a Sierra Nevada beer!!!
He fits the mold of the rules for thee not for me crowd.
Bruce who? Is this a story about a bitter burnout narcissist pissed off because no one gives a shit about him?
Narcissist is right. Proof wisdom doesn’t come automatically with age.
His 2ND!!! self-indulgent Biopic after "Road Diary", which my sister-in-law, a true lib, forced me to go see (with my wife). Boring and dull.
I hope you told her! 🤣
I’m waiting for the biopic “Wrapped Up Like a Douche: The Bruce Springsteen Story”
I think in some ways that was this movie.
That is funny!
John Cafferty And The Beaver Brown Band... But definitely sounds like Springsteen.
Manferd Mann did the cover of that song
Springsteen wrote it.
Love the comments here! Love your posts Sasha! Wish my daughter didn’t have TDS. Lost my grandkids too. Very sad.
Somehow we indoctrinated our kids well enough with common sense they have stayed on the right side, even in Minnesota. It must be tough with many of their friends gone left. My grandkids are on the right track. My daughter is home-schooling and takes the grandkids to area farms for special field trips
Glad things are going correctly for you. Thank God!
After nearly 40 years on Active Duty (USAF and US Public Health Service), Girl Scouting, team sports, and most importantly, faith in her upbringing from birth, none of it stopped the transition left. Her husband works at a big university, that’s the issue. He has TDS worse than she does.
"Big University".... you mean indoctrination factory. That IS the problem. My kids did not make it through college and I didn't care. They did not need all that mind-control, and it wasn't as bad before 2010 as it is now.
Yes, I sent my kids to "college" and one has a masters degree= of course this is when it meant something. I said recently I would NOT send a child of mine to college today, I would send them to a trade school or to apprentice somewhere. Colleges are an indoctrination center for marxists and idiots who can't do anything besides get "tenured" at a college. Real life? Not a clue.
Yep, really big! He’s been there 20+ years.
snore tenured no doubt and can't find his way out of a paper bag in real life. One trick pony.
Thank-you for your service, Michael. There’s several other military veterans on this site too.
Sorry to hear. I worked in higher ed for a generation and was lucky enough to emerge and retire intact. Of course I was in a very technical area and not the squishy, feely foggy bottom of the humanities. Hell, several of us even worked on the Trump campaigns of 2020 and 2024.
Glad I was a student in the mid-70s. You could get a glimpse of the coming veer to the left but most professors were no-nonsense WW2 and Korea types. Now, I would not recommend it, especially for young, bright minds.
Lost most of my family when they found out I was pro Trump. So sad. 😞
Same here. Awful 😞
Thanks.
This is so sad. We are lucky enough that our kids and grands are filled with common sense. Sent our kids and grands to parochial grade schools and then warned them about indoctrination happening at high schools and colleges. Go along with the BS to get a good grades but NEVER change your beliefs. So far it has worked.
Very sad indeed. I'm so sorry. You never know though: they could come around; the kids in particular.
Very sad. 🙏
Thanks. It’s been tough. Their loss.
It really isn’t lol.
I was like you Sasha, a teenager when my Springsteen fandom began. Loved him!!!! We started with Greetings from Asbury Park and The Wild the Innocent, and then it was off to the races. He really went off the rails with Obama, as so so many celebrities did. I was losing interest by then anyway just due to age & life stages, but boy howdy, when the TDS began he totally lost me. Except for a very few old favorites, I won’t even listen to his music anymore. He almost matched Robert De Niro in the TDS category, and that guy was frothing at the mouth!
DeNiro.... a once-great actor. Sad
Did you see the Irishman? DeNiro is laughable in it. Almost a caricature. I honestly think he brought he leftist had to his later movies.
He’s older moves are really excellent. I’m not a fan of him anymore.
I wear a tee shirt regularly that states " No one cares what actors think" My stand on Dinero
Good shirt
Best movie I ever saw him in, almost as good as Godfather II, was Once Upon A Time in America. Long (4 hours) but good movie.
Yes his old movies were good
It was absolutely ridiculous.
To quote the late, great Thurman Munson, and directing this to BS (appropriate initials, indeed): "Retire."
What an embarrassment these "Entertainers" are. They are the biggest hypocritical narcissists on the planet.
The greatest country in the world all gave them their opportunities to succeed, become wealthy and never have to work another day in their life.
YET, they need to constantly be in the spotlight. If I had made the money these people made I would retire, spend as much time with my family as I possibly can.
I wouldn't be going on the news ranting TDS hatred and stupidity.
My favorites are the anti-capitalist entertainers, as if there's a lot of money to be made under all of the socialist and communist regimes of the world.
You mean like Jane Fonda? Born with a silver spoon from her parents; naturally resentful of the system that provided her with that spoon; but would do anything to be part of that system, including softcore porn (Barbarella) and now resents the system that provided for her Malibu home and friendship with buddies like Barbra Streisand. You mean that confused, sad, psychopath?
LOL Yup
Exactly. They never would have made their success in those other types of countries. The hypocrisy and virtue signaling is astounding.
That's because you have a brain and common sense as we all do. I avoid the subject with the nutjobs in my family, they are crazed. I am too old for that insanity.
It's not you, Bruce. It's us. We're just not that into you.
Hilarious and accurate.
Bruce is one of Rock's false prophets. A Billionaire who talks about his working class hero persona as if it were real. His music is full of musical cliches, and his lyrics are full of lyric cliches. The tracks he produces are very square--no groove. The arrogance of his album of Motown hits is insulting to the memory of Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson and to the Commodores and all the other musicians and singers.
And what is with the permanent orange tan glow he wears?
And what can you say about a man who writes working class hero songs but flies his daughter's horse to the European horse shows in a private jet?
Nice work if you can get it.
Maybe it's me but I just have a hard time believing people that are 100 millionaire can claim to speak for [us] average working people. I just don't pay attention to what they say. This doesn't mean I don't enjoy the music or the art or the performance but I just wish they would stop preaching from their mansions.
Seriously? It’s his orange tan you’re mocking? The irony is rich lmfao.
He's not the boss of me.......
Good one....lol
Springsteen is a liberal 'tard. I refuse to listen to his music, which has gotten progressively worse since his apparent head injury in the 90s
The last song that spoke to me was The Ghost Of Tom Joad. And its actually a perfect dust bowl ballad for the current times.
Today he may as well have written The Ghost Of Tom Greed.
Phila / South Jersey deplorable here. We grew up listening to Springsteen in the 70's and 80's, he was one of us. We were proud of the guy. I could not believe it when he was on the cover of the NY Times magazine after Trump won in 2016 saying he was so distraught because he didn't sway more of his fans to vote for Hillary. It was like being kicked in the gut. He was playing us all along. He can go hang out with the other phoney Howard Stern. They deserve each other.
Look at you in that picture.... I was in high school in the 80's. Hard to believe it's that long ago and even harder to believe the changes in life, politics, technology, and culture we are dealing with now. I don't know whether to be optimistic or pessimistic for the balance of my years on this little planet.
Go with optimistic, Jim; you can always change your mind if things go south.
Yes... I should be optimistic... until Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up in dark glasses as the terminator for real.
Relax, I was in my 30's :)