The Wykehamist
In music, by the Swinging Sixties, the Beatles— once the voice of Britain and youth around the world— were being dragged from the everyman towards Yoko Ono’ s conceptual art, Bob Dylan was hanging out with Allen Ginsberg and doing oil painting, and Robert Fraser’ s Mayfair art gallery was being frequented by the Rolling Stones. Popular music itself was leaving the popular behind, and for a while, pop stars were part of the interconnected arts.
But then, in the seventies, Springsteen brought Larkin’ s counter-modernist vision to the global stage, just when anthology poetry and popular music appeared to have fully diverged. Popularised first with his clear return to the blue-collar background that shapes the American Pop vision, he showed us everyday life, not out of a conviction to glorify it or oppose the intellectual art form, but simply because it was there. Like a modern Lyrical Ballads, his songbook breathed‘ the essential passions of the heart’(‘ Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads). He made it not new, but real.
The American Dream was a cultural export that had captivated the world, and Springsteen showed it to us from the inside. Like Romantic John Clare, persuaded by his publisher to compose in his native Northamptonshire dialect and inhabit a world of dykes and country fairs, Springsteen filled his character tales with imagery of turnpikes and highways that he had known as a young man. It was the specificity of Clare’ s dialect that made his work not isolationist, but translatable to anyone else in a similar upbringing; it felt like something from the heart. With Springsteen, millions could relate, perhaps not to the specific diner of his home town, but to the sense of home. This was a key thing internationalist modernism had lost— home, in every sense of the word. Home, perhaps, only as the western literary canon. Home in poetry only as the chrysalis of poetry itself. Springsteen returned poetry to a raw reading of his cultural experience. He set his songs up as ballads— stories about people lost in their lives: people running from debt to the romantic vision of Atlantic City(‘ Atlantic City’), a lover to whom he never said goodbye(‘ Bobby Jean’) and another who just wanted his mother-in-law to shut up because‘ this car just ain’ t big enough for her and me’(‘ Sherry Darling’).
The poetry put to song in the Ancient World seems to carry two themes— the Sapphic emotional recount of experience, and the Homeric glory in an era’ s way of life. Springsteen gives us both. He pitches industrialism against place,‘ born outta steel’ in a world where‘ mosquitoes grow big as airplanes’(‘ Wrecking Ball’). He makes the industrial landmarks his Trojan Plain, where‘ soul crusaders’(‘ Night’) meet on‘ a highway jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive’(‘ Born to Run’). He cries‘ I’ m on fire’(‘ I’ m on fire’).
He writes for‘ the hungry and the hunted’(‘ Jungleland’) in us all.
In 2025, New York Times journalist John McWhorter asked his readers‘ are there any Springsteen lyrics that move you?’ The results were incredible. Over a thousand people responded. Here are some that moved me particularly:
‘ On his right hand Billy tattooed the word love and on his left hand was the word fear And in which hand he held his fate was never clear.’
‘ Cautious Man’, Tunnel of Love
‘ One soft, infested Summer, me and Terry became friends, Trying in vain to breathe the fire we were born in.’
‘ Backstreets’, Born to Run
‘ May I feel your arms around me May I feel your blood mix with mine A dream of life comes to me Like a catfish dancing on the end of a line.’
‘ The Rising’, The Rising
‘ At night I could hear the blood in my veins, It was just as black and whispering as the rain.’
‘ Streets of Philadelphia’
It is clear that Springsteen has unleashed verses whose words craft an emotional experience we do not forget. He has catapulted a genre dancing in the dark to make us blinded by its light.
Start with‘ Jungleland’. I consider it the great epic poem of our age, its lyrics crackling with the American Dream’ s effervescent dissonance. Listen to the whole thing with nothing but the lyrics before you. I guarantee it will make your mind whirl.
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