Blue Sky Blues.

everygreatsongever:

Bruce Springsteen: “I’m On Fire” (Born In The USA, 1984)

Years ago (as in a decade or more; I was in college at the time), Late Night with Conan O’Brien ran a gag video in the style of those CD and LP compilations they used to advertise in the middle of the night on the networks. (Do they still advertise those? I haven’t watched TV at 2:00 am in a long, long time, but it seems like sets like that are obsolete now.)

The schtick was that it was Max Weinberg’s Greatest Hits, and it was just Max playing the drum tracks from all the Springsteen hits. You can see it here, because everything is on the Internet. It’s funny stuff, and the point is really driven home when max plays “My Home Town,” which involves hitting the hi-hat and nothing else. 

They could have conveyed the same point using “I’m On Fire.” I listened to the song closely several times tonight, and he never varies from the very simple pattern he sets down at the beginning of the song. He doesn’t need to, either. This has long been one of my favorite Springsteen songs, and I think its sparse simplicity is the reason. So many of his best songs lean toward constant overload, where even the quite parts feel crammed with activity, but this one doesn’t. It goes the opposite way.

It has a fraction of the lyrics of something like “Born To Run” or “Meeting Across the River, but it doesn’t need any more than that to convey its protagonist’s probably unhealthy lust for a woman he likely should not be pursuing. The minimal backing plays up the fevered intensity of his longing and gives the unsettling impression that he’s holding back, controlling himself, and things could get bad if he loses that control.

Really, how much more do have to say when your second verse begins like this: “sometimes it’s like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull/and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my skull.” That’s about half the verse lyrics in the song right there, in two lines. And there’s Max, slapping away at the rim of his snare, so calmly. This was recorded around the same time as Nebraska, before most of the rest of Born in the USA, and you can hear how this might have functioned as a bridge back to the overloaded sound he took a break from in 1982. 

Nothing in particular made me think of this song—it just came up on the shuffle as I was driving home and the sun was going down, and there was a huge glowing X in the sky made of jet contrails. The weather is so warm.

Liner Note:

I never was fond of the “little girl/daddy” bit in the opening line—I always hated that kind of paternalism—but I guess songwriters are artists, and they paint with the palette they’re given, and paternalism, is definitely a much-swirled daub on the rock and roll lyrics palette.

johnnydontcry:

Megan’s Top 55

#40: Atlantic City - Bruce Springsteen

Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back

The highlight of my year was walking away from a really attractive, plastic girl mid-conversation because she said Bruce Springsteen was “old man music”. I could never even hug anyone that even thought that.

seanvseverything:

Good music for this time of night.

For those of you who think Springsteen is just all massive anthems and stuff.