Springsteen's Broken Dreams

Bruce Springsteen became topical a couple of weeks ago, but I promise I liked him before it was cool. One of the things that has always drawn me to Springsteen has been the romance in his lyrics – Born to Run, No Surrender, She’s the One – all communicate a sense of freedom in love. Songs like 4th of July, Ashbury Park (Sandy) take you on a journey to a mythical New Jersey summer of beaches, motorbikes, and kisses under the boardwalk.

But Springsteen also doesn’t shy away from the feeling of emptiness and loss that emerges when love fades, romance is lost, and dreams don’t come true. These songs are when he is at his most powerful, and what makes him such a compelling songwriter. I want to highlight three of his songs: Thunder Road (1975), Racing In the Streets (1978), and Wrecking Ball (2012).  The first two are songs I have have a long connection with – I first heard them at about 13 on Springsteen’s Live 1975 – 1985 album If you haven’t heard the album, go listen, it ranks up there with The Who’s Live at Leeds and the Rolling Stones’ Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out. The third comes from a much later album 2012’s, Wrecking Ball. Yet all of these song are compelling because they are human stories - the contain hopes, dreams, and the possibility of redemption

Thunder Road is a Springsteen classic, and it offers redemption to its heroine almost immediately, if only ‘beneath this dirty hood.’ But the redemption comes at a price: throughout Mary struggles to keep her purity. The lyrics mix a sense of youth, idealism and purity, seen in visions dancing ‘across the porch’, freedom of ‘two lanes [that] can take us anywhere,’ and learning to make a guitar ‘talk’ with disappointment, a ‘graduation gown in rags,’ ‘burned out Chevrolets,’ and Mary feeling ‘scared [thinking] we ain’t that young anymore.’ But Mary isn't the only one hurting, the song's speaker begs her not to turn him down confessing ‘I just can’t face myself alone.’ The song is a compelling exploration of the hopes and dreams love provides. In true Springsteen fashion, love comes at a cost, but the song ends hopeful note offering Mary a chance of escape from her dilemma:

But when you get to the porch they're gone

On the wind so Mary climb in

It's town full of losers

And I'm pulling out of here to win

Rather than love, Racing in the Streets starts with friendship, and youthful freedom before facing the crush of reality. The song’s speaker has a ’69 Chevy with a 396,’ put together ‘straight out of scratch’ with his partner and friend Sonny which they raise across the North East. Thunder Road does not explore friendship and here it fades quickly, as ‘some guys just give up living / and start dying little by little, piece by piece’ yet there is hope: love. The speaker wins a girl’s heart in a race, and yet, just as soon she is won ‘there's wrinkles around my baby's eyes / and she cries herself to sleep at night.’ Her dreams are shattered and ‘torn,’ and all she can do is stare into the distance ‘with the eyes of one who hates for just being born.’ The heartbreak is palpable, but there is some hope, at the end, which gives the song a bittersweet feeling, rather than a forlorn one:‘tonight my baby and me we're gonna ride to the sea / and wash these sins off our hands.’ The chorus is repeated, as if the earlier love and youth may still be rediscovered:

Finally we come to Wrecking Ball. A modern song, its lyrics have a more contemporary focus. It is inspired by Giant’s Stadium, which was demolished in 2010 and replaced by what is now the Metlife Stadium. Despite the more concrete (pun intended) subject the song still echoes themes found in much earlier tracks. There is consistent sense of nostalgia from the opening ‘misty years ago’ to the ‘champions come and go’ and of course ‘victories and glories’ paired with ‘hopes and desires.’ And as is the case with two other songs I have discussed in Wrecking Ball those hopes are ‘scattered to the wind’ while the victories are ‘turned into parking lots.’ This is where Wrecking Ball is different from the previous two songs: there is a more tangible destroyer of aspirations. More so than earlier songs, Wrecking Ball questions whether or not the march of time is as inevitable as it seems. ‘Bring on your wrecking ball’ Springsteen dares, but this is aimed to an actual antagonist. Wrecking Ball's lyrics address a ‘mister’ bringing about the change. Change doesn’t just appear in the next verse as it does in Racing in the Streets, it is the direct result of the actions of others. Instead, Wrecking Ball is a protests against a system that equates change and progress, no matter what it loses in sacrificing the past.

Altogether, there is an evolution across these songs – something you would probably expect given there is a 37-year gap between them – nonetheless it is worthy of thought. In Springsteen’s early songs, dreams are crushed without thought; it is just how it goes. In his later songs, he is more accusatory. In Wrecking Ball, dreams aren’t crushed; Springsteen dares his antagonist to come crush them only ‘if you’ve got the balls.’ It is, perhaps, representative of a change in his view of the American Dream, always so central to Springsteen’s song writing. The Dream is no longer just a lie if it doesn’t come true; it is something being actively destroyed by outside forces that profit from its destruction.