I sometimes wonder if Bruce Springsteen ever tires of performing as the avatar of American sincerity. Several of the reviews I’ve read hint that Springsteen’s post-inaugural Working on a Dream seems to sonically and lyrically reflect the new era of positivity and good feelings ushered in by the Obama administration. At the very least, the title Working on a Dream seems a bit like a mothballed Obama campaign slogan. Even the album’s dreadful cover art seems a cousin to the ubiquitous “Obamafied” images that now roam the internet seemingly unchecked.
It kind of makes sense to connect Springsteen with the election and the overall national mood. Springsteen campaigned for Obama and played one of the inaugural parties. And he campaigned for John Kerry before that. And he self-identified as the national shaman on the mostly not good post-9/11 kinda-concept-record the Rising. Even his lower key, solo outings like Devils and Dust and the Seeger Sessions could be read as political, or at least as attempts to put a face on the political or contextualize it. In short, part of what Springsteen obviously does as a pop artist is embody and speak to Americanness. For the most part, rock critics and Springsteen’s audience recognize what he does and respond to it accordingly.
However, I think it’s kind of a lazy approach to Springsteen to just accept his pronouncements on “America” at face value.
It’s not just Springsteen’s fans who accept his “important” pronouncements on Americanness. His critics fall into this trap, too. As a life-long Springsteen fan, I’ve had plenty of “Bruce ain’t the boss of me” arguments. And the one gripe that stands out is that Bruce is phony in his authenticity, that he’s corny because he “means it” in the wrong kind of way. Basically, the complaint is that Springsteen is full of shit about not being full of shit.
Stephen Metcalf’s piece on Springsteen for Slate.com makes some solid points about the whys and wherefores of Springsteen’s authenticity problem. As Metcalf notes and as many of the anti-Boss faction contend, Springsteen’s “believability” is hampered by his association with former Rolling Stone writer and legendary hyperbolizer Jon “I saw rock and roll’s future” Landau. Of course, Landau ultimately managed Springsteen to superstardom — some claim that he turned Springsteen into a working-class parody to do so. Basically, Landau helped craft (or completely crafted) the brokedown American everyman image that made Springsteen a household name. It wasn’t Landau’s first attempt at a makeover. He once managed the MC5 and tried to rebrand them as American teenage delinquents, accidentally inventing the tinny sound of punk rock production along the way.
Still, it’s the on-the-record image-making that is supposedly evidence that Springsteen is inauthentic. I suppose therein lies the rub. Springsteen’s basic image is that he’s a guile-free 100% American genuine article. People expect authenticity from their “Authentic Voices.” Folks like Bowie and Dylan can get away with changing masks because that’s part of their act. And cranky old Neil Young can put “mercurial” on his resume with hardly a peep because it’s part of what Young’s fans expect. Springsteen’s projected seriousness and sincerity is one of the reasons he can seem a bit inauthentic.
In his review of Working on a Dream for Salon, “Springsteen Can’t Save Us,” Louis P. Masur describes the record as Springsteen returning “to an original faith in rock ‘n’ roll as the music of liberation. [Springsteen] once observed that Elvis freed our bodies and Dylan freed our minds. Springsteen is working on our souls.” That’s some heavy lifting. And I think it’s a bit much to expect of any rock and roller. Of course, that “saving” is part of the Landau-Springsteen myth. The “Gospel According to Landau” maintains that Springsteen “saved” mainstream rock and roll from hippie bloat and returned it to its proper blue jeans and bee hives glory. This isn’t too different than what McLaren claimed for his Sex Pistols.
Still, the wires holding up the Pistols’ act were visible. They weren’t marketed as the “real deal” and therefore could sneer at the swindle as the whole thing imploded. Springsteen on the other hand was a gifted songwriter whose authority was wedded to his image. He couldn’t necessarily get out from under his conceptualized image without alienating his audience. It’s little wonder that he went on to become the “voice of the people” or whatever.
So there we have it. Springsteen is an “important songwriter” who makes “important statements” about the state of the nation. Except that’s not really completely true. Superficially Magic was the Bush record and Working on a Dream the Obama record, but only superficially.
I think there’s a case to be made that the increasing (Catholic?) spirituality of Springsteen’s songs as well as the increasing directness of his language (”fuck” even makes an appearance in “Queen of the Supermarket”) could hint that Springsteen’s tiring of worldly trouble and vanity. I mean, “dreams” and “magic” aren’t always positives over the course of Springsteen’s catalogue. If anything “dream” usually turn out to be rotten disappointments in the cold light of Springsteen’s reality. As Masur points out, there’s a bleakness in Springsteen’s vision. This doomy-ness gets overlooked. After all, both Magic and Working… found Springsteen coming to terms with the deaths of two close friends (personal assistant Terry Magovern and E-Street keyboardist Danny Federici). Nevermind that Springsteen himself is getting older and maybe crankier. Cast aside the yammering class’ need to link Springsteen’s mood with the election cycle, and these could be two albums about keeping the faith in the face of death and other diminishing returns. It’s hard to read them this way because Springsteen’s public stance as the important American songwriter does point you towards the easy reading.
And what to make of Springsteen’s ’60s pop fixation on Working…? Or kicking off the album with a long-winded fib about the American outlaw myth? To my ear, Springsteen is reclaiming a bit of the sprawl of his early records and some of the pop zeal of the River. In many ways the slightness of Working… the lack of any real cohesive lyrical themes reminds me of the River. It adds up to one sound. It’s a bunch of songs written by a guy who writes songs and fronts a much-lauded bar band. I haven’t heard any of these songs for decades upon decades, so I can’t yet tell if any of Working… grabs me like “Badlands” does. It seems that Springsteen is working loosely without that push for “importance.”
Of course people are hearing even this lightness as somehow part of some secret code. I think that Working on a Dream is just another Springsteen record. I think he’s enjoying the studio and trying out a new batch of songs. I mean, check the Working-era Halloween goof “A Night with the Jersey Devil.” It seems he’s dropping the pose a bit and having fun. Or maybe I’ve been had again.
