Bruce’s Authenticity: Where did it go?
Article by Alexandra Sepe | Illustration by Mallika Sunder
The struggling Vietnam veteran. The teenagers desperately wanting to escape the dooms of their hometown, but failing to do so. The pregnant 19 year old couple left without a choice. The good man that resorts to crime to pay the bills. The friends that take up street racing to make some fast cash. From the mind of none other than Bruce Springsteen, all the characters above have one thing in common: they are all working class.
Since the release of his 1978 album Darkness on The Edge of Town, Springsteen has been referred to as the spokesperson of the working class. He’s known for portraying an image of authenticity that most musicians lack. Having grown up working class himself, he drew from his personal experiences and those of his family and friends; oftentimes, the characters in his songs even lacked high school diplomas. They therefore resorted to working blue-collar jobs. Springsteen gave a voice to the voiceless and painted the traumatic results of Reaganomics and the Vietnam War. In his song Atlantic City from his 1982 album Nebraska, he sings about a man having to resort to organized crime to support his family of two. Even earlier on, in his 1980 title track The River, Springsteen sings about an unemployed, newly married, and pregnant family. This song was based on conversations he had with his brother-in-law. Springsteen is a storyteller and he’s never shied away from integrating his politics with his music.
Sprinsgteen is known for being Democratic party royalty; he has a podcast with President Barack Obama. After President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, families like the Spingsteens became democratic. New Deal democrats relied on the working class for political support, and in turn, the working class depended on democrats to run the government and the economy. The Brookings Institute uses the metaphor of an escalator to describe the relationship between the two: the democratic party kept the working class’ escalator towards the middle class moving. Whilst the democratic party gained this title, the republican party was known as the party of the rich and the affluent. However, after the tumultuous end of the Vietnam war and unsuccessful democratic presidencies, the escalator stopped moving. Over the past 30 years, there has been a switch. In the 2016 election, 64% of working class individuals without college degrees favored Republican candidate Donald Trump. In the 2020 election, 65% of working class people voted for him. Those same street-racers and desperate teenagers are voting red, and more specifically, they’re Trump supporters. But Bruce is not, and he’s been open about it. In a way, Springsteen has stopped speaking to these working class people. They view him as more hypocritical than authentic. Knowing his audience, Springsteen has always been known for having affordable concert tickets. In contrast, tickets for his upcoming 2023 tour cost hundreds of dollars. In truth, it doesn’t matter where Bruce stands politically. What matters is the fact that through his progression as a “woke” artist, he’s lost his authenticity- his once signifying factor. It all seems counterintuitive, but political polarization does that. As Americans, and more specifically as the youth, we should strive to fight this polarization as best we can. That's the only way we can properly fight some of the most pressing political issues like economic inequality. Springsteen is just one of many artists whose persona has gotten lost in translation. It is imperative that we try to avoid that.
Sources
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/04_demographics_teixeira.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2009/01/14/born_to_write_bruce_springsteens_top_20/