This American Shithead

This article originally appeared on Splice Today.
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“We’ve been travelin’ over rocky ground,” the chorus declares on Springsteen’s latest, Wrecking Ball. And who can deny it? The recession has kicked America in its stained blue jeans; it’s wrestled us to the factory floor and stepped all over our soaring dreams of a good day’s work for a good day’s pay. But the Boss is here to tell you that we will overcome. A sample of gospel here, a neo-soul quasi-rap there, and, of course, that big, bad beat, performed by Bruce Springsteen himself, repeatedly and emphatically smashing his earnest face into the drum. Whump! Whump! Whump! Yeeeeeeeeeeeeyuuuuuuh! This recording matters! Preach it!

Springsteen has arguably been capable of nuance in the past — Nebraska is, at least, a quiet album. But the recession is big and, obviously, it calls for a big response. An anthemic response. A response that causes hogs in the next county to prick up their ears and fart for freedom. We need drums that smash and guitars that soar, and maybe some horns that also soar. We need people to scramble up onto the roofs of their underwater homes and light candles to show that even though we collectively made atrocious financial decisions in the past, we are not so defeated that we can’t continue to appreciate atrocious music in the present.

With an almost simian acumen, Spingsteen limns the troubles of our time, speaking for the working man and working woman inside of rock stars everywhere. “I’ve been down but never this down/I’ve been lost but never this lost/This is my confession/I need your heart/in this depression,” he sings on “This Depression.” You see what he did there? It’s, like, a play on words, because “depression” means both an economic depression and being really sad. So he’s saying he’s really sad, which is what you say in a pop song, plus he’s talking about how the country is having trouble economically. Fucking A, that’s deep.

The whole album maintains that high level of wordplay and perspicuity. “We Take Care of Our Own” is about how we don’t really take care of our own anymore. “Where’s the promise/from sea to shining sea?” he asks, because you can never have enough songs mourning the passing of America’s constantly regenerating hymen. Springsteen’s innocence, too, seems charmingly unbreakable. All the way back on “Born in the USA” he was triumphantly shouting tired patriotic tripe over fist-pumping music only to undermine said patriotic tripe with fairly obvious caveats when he got away from the chorus. The result being huge mega-hits because everyone loves triumphant patriotic bellowing, and the few people who don’t love it can love the caveats instead. The only downside being that it’s utterly ineffectual as protest. But a couple decades in, Springsteen hasn’t figured that out, no doubt because of the purity of his heart, or possibly, because he’s been distracted by raking in the gobs and gobs of cash.

But what the hell, I don’t begrudge him his wealth. I just wish that he could support himself in the style to which he is accustomed in some other profession — maybe as one of those robber barons he (of course) anthemically decries in “Death to My Hometown”? I hate Wall Street as much as the next Occupy sympathizer, but at least for the most part the salivating financiers and malevolent hedge fund vampires who rule over us are willing — eager even — to suck our life-blood quietly. Springsteen, on the other hand, insists on taking the musics of oppressed peoples — African-American gospel, traditional Irish, blues — and rolling it all together with the proportional subtlety of a herd of bilious ungulates.

I appreciate Springsteen’s concern for my bottom line, and, it is in the spirit of helping him help me that I offer the following earnest, heartfelt advice. Boss, if you want to lift my oppression and my standard of living simultaneously, then please, at long last, shut up.
 

14 thoughts on “This American Shithead

  1. “But the recession is big and, obviously, it calls for a big response. An anthemic response. A response that causes hogs in the next county to prick up their ears and fart for freedom.”

    Ah, hahaha. That’s perfect, Noah.

  2. I don’t know. I’ve not listened to the new Springsteen album, but I think the depression pun is simple and well done, like what you’d hear on many old country songs.

    I don’t expect rock music to change much of anything, but after seeing Springsteen play for the first time recently, I’d wager he’s the best entertainer that the genre has ever had. Iggy Pop looks decrepit in comparison. He might be a real asshole in real life (don’t know, don’t care), but he clearly still finds and expresses great joy in what he does — something that can’t be said of most other rock stars out there. As icon worship goes, I’ll support him over any of the others, I guess. He gives you your money’s worth.

  3. There’s plenty of bad country music, so I suppose there could be an example of a similar song. That doesn’t mean it’s not a stupid conceit, though.

  4. I think you’re being horribly unfair. Springsteen is a one-man economic stimulus. Think of all the people who are employed in the process of producing, marketing, and distributing Springsteen’s shitty albums.

  5. The problem is that Springsteen is so into his blue collar role that he does almost all the album production himself. He presses those CDs individually with his own liberty-loving forehead. God’s truth.

  6. I’m not understanding the central objection here: That artists/writers/etc. are often much better off than their subjects? That rock stars often don’t sing from personal experience? That they take on character POVs that aren’t their own (“MIck, how dare you sing with a fake southern drawl”!)? That Springsteen isn’t as “authentic” (black) as modern R&B? Surprise, surprise.

  7. Um…I’d say that the objection is that the album is a giant piece of shit, and that he deploys authenticity claims with the subtlety of pachyderm-filled balloons in order to make really desperately stupid points — all while not even being willing to embrace said points, and the consequence thereof, but instead giving himself cutesy outs so that he won’t, you know, lose any money because of his politics.

    It’s a crappy, loud, pretentious, smug, and idiotic album.

  8. Black metal’s pretensions are pretty weird; it’s not about being relevant so much as it is about being debased. I don’t know that it’s exactly smug either; certainly not smug about doing good for the world.

    I don’t know…I mean, which black metal album are you talking about? Drudkh’s politics are really elliptical, and the way they use folk sources is substantially less leaden. The relationship between their folks sources and the music is a lot more complicated too; it’s not just, “here is Irish music and therefore I have something to say to the working class.” They’re much better musicians as well. Black metal is really quite different from stadium rock in a lot of ways. I don’t think that’s really something that needs to be debated, does it?

  9. “They’re much better musicians as well.”

    Come on. I don’t believe that technical ability translates as better music, but that’s just ridiculous.

    I’m not a fan, but Mayhem, Immortal and Burzum seem to really believe all the dumb shit they sing about. And I can’t think of too many musicians who are more smug (see the documentary Until the Light Takes Us or read that book on the Norwegian scene). True, they’re not being smug about doing good (as if that’s a better form of smugness?).

    And Springsteen could play an intimate setting with an acoustic guitar or he can completely dominate a stadium. Relegating him to “arena rock” isn’t accurate. The guy is a master showman, regardless of one’s opinion about the quality of his music.

    I’m not a fan of “Hollywood leftism” and the like, either. It just seems that the ideological objections to such a position are leading you to dismiss most of Springsteen’s catalog, which contains some really good songs. Sean Penn is an asshole, has starred in some asshole movies, but he’s a good actor, too.

  10. Nope. Not dismissing his catalog. I like Nebraska a lot. I like Dancing in the Dark. His early albums in general are all right. Not great, but not offensive either.

    This particular album synthesizes everything about him that’s crap.

    And, also…nobody claims that black metal is the Greatest Music Ever Made the way they do about Springsteen, I don’t think. He’s just catastrophically overrated.

    It helps in black metal that you can’t actually hear the words for the most part, so it doesn’t really matter whether they believe what they’re singing about because what they’re singing is just one long shriek as far as the listener is concerned.

    I haven’t heard much Mayhem. I like Burzum quite a bit, and Immortal is great…but they’re hardly the only black metal bands out there. My favorite black metal album is probably Pyha, which is anti-war, and not at all stupid, I don’t think.

    But in general, if you’re asking me if I’d prefer Satanism or smug NPR leftism for my music, then, yes, please, I’ll take the Satanism. Especially if I can’t hear the words.

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