Last week, when the one in Nebraska Lincoln Journal Star reported that Bruce Springsteen had been seen in town with a film crew, my heart jumped to the best stage: maybe I was working on a documentary for a 1982 reissue Nebraska, which is due to the treatment of the set of file excavation boxes. That beloved solo album featured images that combined Springsteen from his childhood in the 1950s with clear descriptions of Ronald Reagan’s economic division in America, with a disturbing series of vignettes that seems increasingly relevant today. . Nebraska he arrived during a fertile period in Springsteen’s career as he was preparing for his 1984 commercial breakthrough Born in the USA The catches are legendary, including a rumored electric version with his faithful E Street Band, and there are also mountains of unreleased songs from that era, such as one called “The Klansman,” which clarify his conflicted stance and famously misunderstood about American patriotism. . So I imagined it with optimism visiting the eponymous state of the album to shed light on all of this, offering a new vision of an artistic peak.
Instead, he was filming a Jeep ad, called “The Middle,” for the Super Bowl. This is the first commercial appearance in 71 years, its first product approval and, apparently, a project that took a significant hand, creatively. At the two-minute, grumpy announcement, Springsteen visits a humble church located in the geographic center of the country. Alone, he meditates on what makes us Americans while driving a Jeep and offers a message of hope to a country that, in his view, has strayed from its initial promise. “We can get to the top of the mountain, through the desert,” he says in a voice-over gravel, looking for gravitas. “And we’ll cross that division.” At the end, a message on the screen addresses the “United States of America.”
Now, if you’ve never been receptive to Springsteen’s patented brand of rock’n’roll transcendence, or if you’re skeptical about working-class fixations that helped make him one of the most famous musicians in Springsteen. Earth, this announcement will not. convinces you otherwise. In fact, it may be so always seen: here he preaches an imprecise message of unity while being away from any real human being. He speaks with a promised land that may never have existed. It looks incredibly well maintained, though you want to think it’s weathered and worn out by years of manual labor. He sells you a car.
And even for someone like me, who sees his work as a complex and empathetic portrait of American life, the message here feels blurry and, even worse, not entirely his. On the one hand, Springsteen himself has never sought any kind of starting point and the political perspective of his lyrics has never wavered. From the bitter class struggles represented in 1978 Darkness on the outskirts of the city through the boisterous accusation of the Iraq war in 2007 Magic, has shown us over and over again, exactly where it is.
Not to mention, he has struggled for decades to be co-opted by companies and politicians trying to align with his earned integrity. When the powerful once attempted to throw themselves into a heart’s red-white-and-blue bumper sticker “Born in the USA” as they analyzed their condemnatory verses, Springsteen stood firm on his negative. In the mid-1980s, he allegedly turned down a $ 15 million offer from Chrysler to license success and turned down President Reagan, who called him out during a campaign shutdown in New Jersey. “The other day the president mentioned my name and I wondered what his favorite album should be,” Springsteen told the concert audience of the time. “I do not think it was the Nebraska Although at the time he tried to laugh at these advances, Springsteen shook: for the first time in his career, his work fell out of his control.