Bruce Is Livin’ In The Future


Don’t worry darling, we’re living in the future and none of this has happened yet - Bruce Springsteen, Livin’ In The Future, Magic
Click to listen to Livin’ In The Future

Bruce Springsteen has been relevant as a musician and cultural icon since he hit the scene with Greetings From Asbury Park thirty-five years ago. That’s an awfully long time to be at the top of the game. There’s been a few periods where I thought he might be losing it. Most of his work in the 90s is forgettable in my book. But The Rising brought him back and he’s been pretty solid in this decade, his fourth.

His new record, due out in early October, is called Magic. And he still has the magic. It’s a terrific record. Tom Watson emailed me this morning and said:

the thing feels like a sequel to his early stuff, written specifically for anybody who’s been along for the whole ride. And the band’s in great form.

Tom’s right. Magic takes from each of Bruce’s various periods.

Gypsy Biker reminds me of his real early stuff
The opening piano of Terry’s Song takes you back to Born To Run
I’ll Work For Your Love (the best song on the record) could have been on Darkness
Long Walk Home has the sound of The River
Magic would fit right in on Nebraska
Radio Nowhere has the guitar rock sound of Born In The USA
Livin’ In The Future makes me want to listen to The Rising
Click to listen to I’ll Work For Your Love

And then there is the song Jason posted about last night, Girls In Their Summer Clothes, which sounds like it could have been on The Rising, but also has something new that I haven’t heard in a Bruce song before.

It’s quite a piece of work for a man who will be 60 in a couple years. Now it could be, like The Stones’ Tattoo You, that Magic is a collection of outtakes that Bruce culled together in order to have a record to tour on this year. Somehow I doubt it.

There are a few weak songs on the record, but that’s par for the course in the day and age when artists feel compelled to put fourteen songs on a record. Born To Run had eight songs, Darkness and Nebraska had ten. I have a hard time thinking of a brilliant record, other than Exile, that has more than ten songs on it.

I am certain that any fan of Bruce is going to enjoy this record and many will put it up there along with his best. It’s a great listen. And it ends so well. The song is called Terry’s Song. He could have written about himself.

Just like when they built you brother, they broke the mold

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September 12th, 2007
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Viewing 13 Comments

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    It took me a long time to appreciate Bruce, even longer to like him.

    I'm glad he's working with the band again, seems to me that's his best stuff, with the glaring exception of 'Born in the USA' - what a crapfest that record is.

    Why is it an issue if an album is made from a 'collection of outakes'? 'Tattoo You' is great, and I'd say there's planty of good records that were made that way, not to say that 'Magic' was, it probably wasn't.

    'London Calling' has more than ten songs on it, so do most Ramones albums, then there's 'Blonde on Blonde', 'All Things Must Pass', 'Stadium Arcadium', I'm not a big fan of The White Album, but many others are.....I could go on, maybe somebody else will.....
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    Type your comment here.
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    Oops, hit the submit button too early.
    Just wanted to add that "Abby Road" was a collection of out takes from the "Let It Be" sessions, containing more than 10 songs. "Led Zeppelin" was sort of a collection of out takes left over from the Yardbirds, only 9 songs.
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    Three things, I think this is all new stuff from Bruce.

    I think McCartney wrote a mess of new stuff for Abbey Road, no?

    And the band sounds fantastic on the new Bruce record...hard and loose on the rockers. Makes me wanna go see 'em again.
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    Just wanted to add that “Abby Road” was a collection of out takes from the “Let It Be” sessions, containing more than 10 songs.

    Some of the songs on Abbey Road were being bandied about during the Let it Be sessions, but Abbey Road to my knowledge consisted of all fresh takes of the songs.
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    takes...

    1. havent heard the whole album but the new bruce song i heard sucks derivative rock balls... maybe i just dont get it...

    2. many great albums with more than 14 songs dont know where to strt... the white alkbum (u mentioned), songs in the key of life, blood sugar sex magic, out of the blue, sat night fever soundtrack... heck, elvis costello and the a's mustve made 5 w more than 14 and they kicked ass everyone of em......

    3. magical mystery tour was more a leftovers album than abbey road as the production process of side 2 of the latter became the brilliance of it transcending any of the individual song fragments...
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    Uh, how did you guys get a copy of the album and how about slipping it to your favorite New Critics shamus?
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    friend me on pownce and i'll send it
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    Phil, "stale" is the word I used to describe "Radio Nowhere"...If it were the only song I'd heard from the album I wouldn't be interested at all. It's part of a trio of songs that open the album and which sound like they were written to give the band something new but familiar to play on the road (Livin in the Future is a triplet heavy R&B; riff that sounds like a 10th Ave. re-write, for example.)

    But there are maybe half a dozen songs on the new record that are great, including several with arrangements and melodies that harken back to mid60s rock/pop (Think: Walk Away Renee) that add something new to Springsteen's arsenal and sound fresher than anything he's done in years.

    Ted, BITUSA isn't so crappy. There's a lot of good and some great material there (esp. the title track) but the instant you heard it you knew the cheesey synth sounds were going to sound unlistenably dated in short order. And the do.

    Of course there's are lots of great rock albums w/ more than a dozen songs, but I think Fred's point is well-taken. In the LP era rockers only needed 44 minutes of music to get an album to market, in the CD era they need to write 777 minutes--that's 70 percent more music. It's like baseball expansion and diluted starting pitching. There are lots of albums in the CD era that would have been more exciting and listenable at 44 minutes.

    Ironically, Springsteen was once the guy with so much great material that a lot of it had to be left off the LPs (BITUSA would have benefited from songs like Murder Inc and This Hard Land, Darkness from The Promise, Nebraska from The Losing Kind).
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    I agree on BITUSA - it's cheesey for two reasons: the dated synths, and Springsteen's Elvis-like preening (foisted by Col. Landau, no doubt). We remember the Dancing in the Dark video, and the ass on the cover. Some terrific tunes under the covers though - I'm particular to Downbound Train, I'm On Fire, and I'm Going Down. I'm not crazy about the Bobby Jean/Glory days ouevre though. The title track - so widely misunderstood - is a great song.
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    Bobby Jean is a good song.
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    You always were a sucker for that tune...but generally I agree with you, BITUSA suffers in critical review from te hype and style that surrounded it.
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    Born in the USA is the quintessential song and album of the 80s. The keyboard isn't cheesey, it's perfect. It captures the Yuppie generation better than any other sound I've ever heard. The Springsteen war cry is also perfect. Why? Because of the sadness and despair that underlines the pseudo- Jingo sound that goes with the powerful lyrics. Really listen to the keyboard and the key it's in and in emotion in the voice. Beneath the surface is a deep sadness.

    It was the 80s in a nutshell. A mentaility spawning over the top spending, pride, and stupidity but underneath it all there was the truth that everyone wanted to ignore.

    The Vietnam war and the treatment of the vets was just the setting to present the downfall of the American conscience that had been lost in the glitter and gold of the 80s. While people suffered all over the world (and in America), those born in the main stream USA were charging forward with nothing but sadness behind them.
 

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