Grade: B–
The first Springsteen song I ever heard was ‘Born To Run’, back when I was 14. I clocked the impassioned, overwrought self-mythologising, the grandiosity of the opening riff, the strange lack of a chorus given the promise of the verse. Well, OK, interesting, I reckoned — maybe even good. But great? Never.
I shifted my judgment only once over the following 45 years. Born in the USA had the tunes and stories and the sheer heft that for once matched the chutzpah and the looks. The rest has been either just good or, more often than not, quite a bit less than good. I always reckoned that perpetual sideman Nils Lofgren was by far the superior songwriter, but Nils isn’t quite as alpha male as Bruce.
Western Stars is Bruce’s venture back into Americana, this time weighed down with more strings than you’d find in an insurance policy.
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