Hero Worship: Bruce Springsteen

I first heard Bruce Springsteen after an impulse buy in HMV in my hometown of York. I got Nebraska and put it straight on my iPod. At the time I was spending a lot of time travelling between York and London for recordings and little gigs. I had also just broken up with a girl and was smoking too much, generally in a bit of a weird headspace and getting sick of trying to have my music heard.

I started listening to Nebraska one December night on the train to London and instantly fell in love. I had been a big fan of more modern records that were considered “acoustic” like o by Damien Rice or The End of History by Fionn Regan. But this album was really acoustic. Just one acoustic guitar and vocals with the occasional harmonica; it had this real honesty and compassion to it and made me fall back in love with music in a big way.

My favourite Springsteen song is Atlantic City – track two on Nebraska. It’s a song in which Springsteen sings about a romantic escape of a young couple to New Jersey. He comments on the organised crime in the area at the time: “Well they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night,” a reference to the death of an infamous Mafia boss. The chorus then explodes into one of the best lines I’ve ever heard. The way Springsteen sings it is so genuine, and for me, makes the song: “Everything dies baby that’s a fact, but maybe everything that dies some day comes back. Put your make up on, fix your hair up pretty, and meet me tonight in Atlantic City.” Amazing song.

Even though I love the rawness of that track, I also love all the diversity of Springsteen’s albums. Another favourite of mine is The Rising – a much fuller sounding and more produced album and still very powerful. There seems to be a lot of post 9/11 sentiments on this album especially in songs like My City of Ruins and Into The Fire, but Springsteen manages to encapsulate a real sense of hopefulness and redemption on this album which is one of the many reasons I love it – “May your strength give us strength, may your faith give us faith, may your hope give us hope, may your love give us love.”

I could talk about The Boss all day but I’ll spare you. I love Springsteen because he writes amazing songs that evoke lots of different emotions. For me he is the perfect song-writer and seems to always find what is right for “the song”. He writes and performs music with a level of honesty and integrity that seems to be something of the past now, unfortunately. I was lucky enough to see Springsteen play live in Hyde Park three years ago and I can safely say that he has helped me and encouraged me with my outlook to recording, writing and releasing music.