60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Bruce Springsteen — “The Rising”

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

In the uncertain moments following 9/11, we were searching for comfort and someone to help us make sense of it all. Today, Rob discusses the one musician who was capable of stepping up and capturing the emotions the American people were feeling: Bruce Springsteen. Rob recaps the political statements Springsteen had been making in the decades before, which prepared him for the creation of “The Rising.” Finally, he is joined by music critic and Springsteen expert Steven Hyden to discuss where the album ‘The Rising’ ranks in his discography. Host: Rob Harvilla Producers: Justin Sayles and Olivia Crerie Additional Video Editing: Kevin Pooler Guest: Steven Hyden Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My tendency historically is to wildly overplay something like this, footage like this. I'm inclined to immediately get all melodramatic and emo about it. But let's not do that yet. Let's just chill out, shall we? Simply put, here we got two rad guys who got on stage at a Tower Records in New York City late on a Monday night and they sang some rad songs until past midnight early Tuesday morning. Two guys and one accordion. So yeah, here we got Brooklyn rock band. They might be giants. My favorite band of all time,

for what it's worth. John Linnell and John Flansberg. Lennel's playing the accordion. This is the Tower Records at Fourth and Broadway in the East Village. It closed in 2006. There's a giant Chipotle there now. That's not true. I made that up, but it spiritually feels true. No, it would be way funnier if it were a Chipotle. Now, they might be giants are throwing a midnight release party here at Tower Records to celebrate the Tuesday release of their eighth studio album called Mink Car. This particular song ain't on the new album, and it ain't originally their song at all,

but already this tune is tremendously important to They Might Be Giants, and to the place they call home, which is the place that most of us at one time or another have at least daydreamed about calling home. This song is called New York City. The camera is about to swing out toward the crowd here, at which point I for sure am going to get all melodramatic in email. about this. Re-watching this recently, when I first saw the crowd, I almost burst into tears. That's the vibe around here lately. And I was struck, first of all, just by the impressive size of the crowd.

It's a packed house. And also the tremendously sweet and awkward and endearing and cautiously jovial, tentative, hand-clapped nature of these people. This is a primo-they-mite-be-giants crowd. I have been the most awkward feeling person in dozens of crowds just like this. Or at the very least, I've been one of the tallest people in dozens of crowds just like this. But alas, I was not here among these people who had gathered at the East Village Tower Records so they could buy a new They Might Be Giants album at the stroke of midnight on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. There they are.

There they were. All my fellow, they might be Giants fans. All my friends. Let's chill out, okay? You almost can't look directly at this, at this footage of a cheerful crowd in New York City clapping along to a bouncy song called New York City eight hours or so before the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

You got to watch this through a pinhole and a cardboard box, like it's a solar eclipse. This footage appears near the end of a 2003 documentary about they might be giants called Gigantic, a tale of two Johns, directed by A.J. Schnack. John Linnell, talking to the village voice years later in 2013, John says, quote, it's a kind of sweet thing. We're just there. There's a really nice crowd. The place is full of happy people.

and we played New York City, and it's one of the last moments of the film. He also says, It has this feeling of a previous era being celebrated that ended that day. New York is still a nice place, actually, but it's a very poignant thing, this scene in the movie. End quote. And the movie wisely, mercifully, doesn't oversell the poignance, right? The movie doesn't even put the date on screen.

We just let the moment breathe. If the movie tells you what day it is, this scene in Tower Records abruptly becomes a horrible tragedy. The whole vibe is crushed by the weight of what these poor people don't know. They don't know. But without the date, it's just another night in New York City that has the potential to be the best night of your life, because that's what happens every night in New York City,

or at least that's what happens in songs about New York City. York City. So this song is written and first recorded by a band called Cub, a pop-punk band from Vancouver that's in Canada. Nico Case, the phenomenal singer-songwriter Nico Case, played drums in Cub for a little while. Cub described themselves as cuddlecore. Their song, New York City, first appears on their 1995 album, Come Out, Come Out, which also

features Cub's own cover versions of I'm Your Angel by Y'OX. Coco Ono and vacation by the go-goes. All of that is delightful and makes a great deal of sense to me. Here's Cubs video for New York City. Dig how happy these people are just to be in New York City. Dig how genuinely psyched Cubs are to be asking directions and rocking out on a boat near the Statue of Liberty and shopping for flowers on a street corner. How infectiously wholesome is this exactly? The streets are paved with diamonds. And yet, as infectiously wholesome as this song might be, as joyous and strategically naive as this song might appear,

let's also say that everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty is a monster line in a pop punk song. Or for that matter, a regular punk song. That is a line with perfect, gleaming razor-sharp teeth. That is a line so beautiful it hurts. So we're singing joyously here about the idea of New York City, the eternal, universal, gargantuan romantic aura of New York City, as experienced primarily by those of us who do not live there.

We're singing about the historical and sentimental concept, the myth, more so than the physical place. So they might be giants cover this song on their 1996 album Factory Showroom. I'm pretty sure I saw Cub open. for TMBG on the tour for that album. Actually, I was one of the tallest people in the crowd. They might be giants who notably do live there. John and John started the band in Brooklyn in the early 80s.

And so John and John can appreciate, they can capture, they can magnify the wide-eyed sentimental exhilaration of Cubs outside looking in vision of the myth of New York City. But John and John are, knowingly, sardonically, but also lovingly, singing from inside of the reality of New York City looking out. And they know that the streets aren't paved with diamonds. Cub know that the streets aren't paved with diamonds. Of course not.

That's ridiculous. We all know that. But the myth of New York City demands that we all secretly, if only subconsciously, pretend to believe otherwise. In that last line there, the best thing about New York City is you and me. That's the most infectiously wholesome and trudely naive line of them all. For Cub, the original song is a straightforward and spectacular love song. We kissed on the subway in the middle of the night.

Where are you going on the subway in the middle of the night? You're not trying to transfer to a G train, are you? That's going to be hella delayed. The G is never on time. To be on time is not in the G train's nature. You know the thing where it's 2 a.m. You're waiting on the subway platform forever? And you hear the train finally approaching, and it turns out to be the trash train or whatever that doesn't stop.

And it just blows through the station, like, and it stinks. Like, it literally stinks. And you're standing there like, ah, crap. And then you got to wait some more. The trash train's going to come like five times in a row. I'm sorry. The best thing about New York City is you and me. But watching They Might Be Giants sing this song to a packed crowd in a new.

New York City record store, in the middle of the night between September 10th and September 11th, 2001, to me, the romantic pairing of you and me becomes us. It becomes everyone here. It becomes everyone who lives here, along with everyone who has ever even thought about living here. In eight hours or so, after this Tower Records' midnight release party, the question becomes, What happens to the societal idea of you and me now? I can't see them coming down my eyes, so I got to make the song cry. I can't see them coming down my eyes, so I got to let the song cry. No offense to they might be giants, but the most famous album released on Tuesday, September

11, 2001 is probably The Blueprint by Jay-Z. The best song on the blueprint is called Song Cry. I don't know if I actually believe that, but it's funnier if I do. And regardless, the concept of making the song cry because you personally can't or won't cry is about to take on a really surreal and grim national importance. Also, dig how young Jay-Z looked back then. Everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty. All right.

It is possible. It is not likely, and I certainly hope this didn't happen to you, but it is hypothetically possible that you woke up on the morning of September 11th, 2001, and you drove to a record store when it opened, and you cheerfully shopped for new CDs that had just come out that day, and you didn't know yet. You were not aware of the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., or the plane crash in Pennsylvania.

This is not likely you not knowing yet. First of all, if you lived in New York City, for example, forget about it. But even if you lived nowhere near anywhere. Record stores open at what, 10 a.m. Everything's already happened by then, pretty much. The series of events and the timestamps of those events are themselves famous. All the terrible things have happened. All the initial terrible things.

This blissful not knowing yet CD shopping excursion requires you to be nowhere near a TV or a radio or basically other people. You've got to be nowhere near a phone also, I suppose. There's probably not a phone in your pocket in 2001, but like despite the absence of social media, word got around. All right? We weren't all suffering from screen addiction in the punishing dystopian 2026 sense of the term, but okay, for me, I first see live TV news footage of the World Trade Center on fire, on a television, hanging. from the stealing of a gold's gym in Columbus, Ohio, somewhere in the 8 a.m. hour. I'm not brag. I was on the elliptical. I wasn't like pumping iron. All right? And then I drove to work at my alt-weekly

newspaper, and I call my then-girlfriend back at our apartment, and I tell her because she is sleeping in because she is a late-night copy editor for the big daily newspaper. And if she hasn't turned on our TV yet, she doesn't know yet. And then at my newspaper, we spend all day sitting in the conference room, watching the TV somebody had wheeled in on a high school substitute teacher type TV stand. And occasionally I'd get up and I'd go gather more intel from the internet at my desk on the same desktop computer I typically use to set my Yahoo fantasy baseball lineup and read Hunter S. Thompson columns on page two on ESPN.com. I'm not telling you my personal 9-11 experience because it's interesting. I'm telling you specifically

because it's boring, because it's pedestrian, because it's mundane. Because part of the singular, spectacular awfulness of 9-11, for those of us comparatively lucky enough to live elsewhere so we could sit around gasping and wincing and just watching it, part of the awfulness is that all of our screens turned against us. All the screens where we usually did all of our screens. our mundane pedestrian boring shit. It's corny and it's melodramatic, but it's also kind of objectively true. We woke up that morning in one world, and we struggled to fall asleep that night in an entirely different world. And it's this super weird and uncomfortable fraternity, right, of albums that came out on 9-11, albums that were technically born into and technically

part of this horrible new world, but the albums themselves don't know it. The musicians. The singers don't know. The singers are dealing with other concerns. Like Mink Carr, the They Might Be Giants album that came out on 9-11. The best song on Mink Car is very explicitly about how it's too loud in the club. That song is called man, comma, it's so loud in here. It's a valid complaint. I'm so glad somebody wrote a song about this. I turned 23 years old in 2001, and I wholeheartedly agreed that it's too loud in here back then. So you can just imagine how much I agree with that now. They might be giants don't know.

They might be giants don't know the world is different now. Bob Dylan doesn't know. On September 11, 2001, Bob Dylan released an album called Love and Theft. It's Dylan's what, 800th album? I don't know. Pretty rad Dylan album, though. In fact, rock critics later declared that love and theft was the best album of 2001. Love and Theft won the 2001 Year End Village Voice, Pazenjop Critics Poll.

Is This It by the Strokes was voted number two. White Blood Cells by the White Stripes was number four, and the blueprint by Jay-Z was number seven. Anyways, that song is called Mississippi, and when Bob Dylan sings about a sky full of fire and pain pouring down, he's talking about something else because he doesn't know. And it's tempting to approach every 9-11 album this way, right? This is the morbid and sensationalistic way to do it. You go back to these albums now, and you find the most apocalyptic and prophetic

and theoretically 9-11-esque line on each one. But that's going to get old fast, being morbid. And besides, I much prefer when some lady tells Bob Dylan, you can't repeat the past. and Bob goes, You can't? What do you mean you can't? Of course you can.

He's quoting you my eyes. He's quoting the great Gatsby there, I think. When he says that, what do you mean you can't repeat the past? Of course you can. Is an awfully morbid and prophetic statement, actually, now that I think about it. Hey, did you know that on 9-11,

literally Slayer released an album literally called God Hates Us All? That sounded way more like the offspring than I thought it would. I probably won't get murdered for saying that. That song

is called Here Comes the Pain but let's not do the morbid prophetic apocalyptic thing, right? They didn't know. Even Slayer didn't know. Even Fabulous didn't know. Clips, cocked on the Cali Coles, keep shitting. With sit blocks for that Cali, bro, keep hitting.

And shit blocks for that Cali, though, keep getting. My tip rock by them Cali holes. This is Fabulous. F-A-B-O-L-U-S, FABILUS. He's from Brooklyn, too, and his debut album, Ghetto Fabulous, came out on 9-11. This song's called Can't Deny It. We got Nate Dogg singing the chorus. And, geez, Louise, that's the most patriotic rap video I've ever seen in my life.

which was apparently not on purpose. Talking to Genius.com years and years later, Fabulous is a verified commenter on Genius.com, just FYI. Somebody asked him about the post-9-11 public reaction to Can't Deny it. And Fabulous says, quote, I did notice that my music video for Can't Deny It started to get even more play after 9-11. We didn't purposely do the stars and stripes

and red, white, and blue color scheme in the video. It was a weird coincidence that the country needed to see something patriotic and uplifting. End quote. This phenomenon of being accidentally patriotic, accidentally topical, accidentally uplifting, there's going to be a lot of this sort of thing in the months and years to come. In the immediate aftermath of 9-11, the American listening public was so shocked, so baffled, so devastated, so desperately in need of solace and a renewed sense of togetherness that apparently we all gravitated to a fabulous video

because there was a lady wearing a red, white, and blue bikini in it. And I get it. We all lived it. We all struggled to process it. And at least for a while, we all had to process it while listening to songs that didn't know. The singers didn't know. Even brand new songs, even songs that came out after 9-11,

even those songs didn't know. The first Billboard album chart, after 9-11, it comes out September 20th. And unsurprisingly, The Blueprint by Jay-Z is the number one album in America. And the blueprint's an all-timer, but the blueprint doesn't know. Jay-Z on the blueprint doesn't know. And so for me personally, for the next several months, pushing deep into 2002, consciously or not, I find myself gravitating toward newish and third. anthemic rock and roll songs that don't know, but boy, it sure seems like maybe they know.

Here we have noted Mesa Arizona rock band Jimmy Eat World performing their quite unexpected smash hit the middle. And speaking of unexpected, on the middle, Jimmy Eat World don't know so hard that this song first came out in July 2001 on an album called Bleed American. An album title that Jimmy Eat World, of course, changed immediately after 9-11. But after 9-11, the middle slowly and unexpectedly rises. It valiantly climbs the charts. And by summer 2002, it's a top five pop hit. And I submit to you that part of the enormous appeal of the middle is that when Jimmy Eat World frontman, Jim Adkins sings, everything, everything will be all right, all right.

He doesn't know yet. but it sure as hell sounds like maybe he does. Same deal with this guy. Tell building shit, voices escape, singing sad, sad songs tuned to chords. Same deal with Jeff Tweety, singer and songwriter and mastermind of the noted Chicago rock band, Wilco. Wilco's fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, is initially scheduled for release on 9-11, but Wilco's label rejects the album,

and the band eventually gets dropped, and it becomes a whole deal, right? And so Wilco briefly streamed this record on the internet for free, starting on September 18, 2001, though Yankee Hotel Foxtrot won't officially come out until April 2002, whereupon it's hailed as a low-key American classic and a triumph of art over capitalism and artists over doofy corporations and so forth.

But yes, also, tall buildings shake, voices escape, singing sad, sad songs. That song's called Jesus, etc. Other songs on this album include War on War and Ashes of American Flags. There were certain echoes. There were certain grim coincidences. Even Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's famous and eerie and beloved cover art, right? The glum neck craning upward shot of the Marina

towers in Chicago, there is a certain echo. Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, his lyrics are often too elliptical to work as straightforward social commentary or even regular commentary, but in an interview included in a 20th anniversary Yankee Hotel Foxtrot box set, Jeff talks about this record's lyrical content, and he says, quote, I was trying to put it in perspective for myself. How can there be all these good things that I love about America, alongside all of these things that I'm ashamed of. And that was an internal question, too.

I think I felt that way about myself. End quote. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, as an American rock album, as a corporation flouting American saga, is inspiring without quite being uplifting, if you get me. Fortunately, other early 2000s rock stars were way better at being unabashedly.

uplifting. Ah yes. Noted Irish rock band U2. U2's Big Whoop comeback album, All That You Can't Leave Behind, came out almost a full year earlier in October 2000, but Beautiful Day, a song about

finding the beauty in life, even when the sky is falling. It is beautiful day that encapsulated, for me, the best case scenario for rock and roll's immediate response to 9-11. Especially when U-2 played Beautiful Day live during their Super Bowl halftime show in February 2002, a performance that famously peaked with U-2 playing Where the Streets Have No Name,

while the names of all the victims of the 9-11 terror attacks scrolled by on giant screens in the background. And this is an absurdly heavy moment. The broadest, the most unabashed, the most nakedly sentimental rock-and-upy, roll gesture imaginable. Presented on the largest, the most commercial, the most prominent stage imaginable, delivered by the most unapologetically sentimental and grandiose rock band imaginable. And the grand finale here, Bono, U2's frontman, Bono lifting his arms and revealing the American flag sewn into the lining of his black leather jacket.

Whether or not this moment worked for you emotionally, I'll say that. this. You two earned the right to do this, or at least to try this. Because in this fraught and shell-shocked and monumentally terrible moment, if you are a rock star who explicitly wants to speak to this post-9-11 moment, to speak to the American people, to speak to the world, to heal the world, to preach a message of hope and resilience and togetherness, that takes authority. The people, the people have to know you, trust you, love you, and believe you. The people have to know that speaking to the people is your whole deal. A U-2 at the Super Bowl-sized gesture takes years. It takes decades of work, decades of groundwork, decades of accumulated goodwill. And with that in mind, now it's time

for somebody to make the first great American rock and roll record that knows. We need somebody capable of rising to this occasion. We need a leader, yes, but rock and roll mythology being what it is, we also kind of maybe sort of need a God, or at least a high-ranking representative of God. We need a walking, breathing violation of the separation of church and state. And that's a mighty short list of people who can do all that and be all that. The list is one person. He's the list.

There's a blood red circle on the cold dark ground and the rain is falling down. On Friday, September 21st, 2001, every major TV network and more than 30 additional cable networks simultaneously aired a primetime star-studded benefit concert

and telethon called America, a tribute to heroes. Speakers and telephone operators, if you were lucky, included lead organizer George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Will Smith, Robin Williams, Callista Flockhart, etc. Musical performers include you too, Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, Eddie Vedder, Mariah Carey, Neil Young, Tom Petty, etc. Also, Fred Durst sang, Wish You Were Here. And you would think I'd want to talk about that, but it turns out I don't. But we start with We start with Bruce Springsteen singing a fairly new Bruce Springsteen song called My City of Ruins.

And this is another instantly burst into tears moment, even now, if I'm not careful, and maybe if you're not careful. Because it's the stillness, the solemnity, the eerie enveloping hush of this moment. This song feels like a tiny drop of sound in an ocean. of absolute stunned silence. And even door's thrown open. I can hear the organ song. But the congregation's gone.

My city of ruins. And even this song technically doesn't know. This song is not about 9-11. This song predates 9-11 by at least a year or so. Bruce Springsteen debuted My City of Ruins live in December 2000, Bruce wrote this song about his troubled hometown, basically, of Asbury Park, New Jersey.

But there is an alchemy taking place right here, right now, on this blockbuster telethon stage in September 2001. A rare and awful in most senses, but also awe-inspiring, in other senses, transubstantiation. because suddenly and permanently, there is no question what Bruce Springsteen wrote this song about. Without your sweet kiss, my soul has lost my friend. Tell me how do I begin again? My city's in ruin. And what I remember most about watching this America a tribute to Heroes Telethon Live, I remember focusing on the voices, the physical voices of all these super famous celebrities and singers.

How rattled they all sounded, each in their own famous idiosyncratic ways. For no particular reason, I will never forget Julia Roberts. The visceral cracks in Julia's voice. Life is so precious. Please, please, let's love one another. live each day, reach out to each other, be kind to each other. Peace be with you. God is great. Yeah, I didn't remember any of those words,

but I totally remember the sound of Julia Roberts saying those words. And Bruce Springsteen sounds rattled too, and it's different when he sounds rattled. Even when rattled, he's still quite a bit growlier. But I'll never forget the sound of Bruce Springsteen repeatedly singing, Come on Rise Up, the gasping breath he takes.

After the first one here, that is an absurdly heavy moment, too. Come on ride. I'm only noticing now that the backing vocalists are all holding hands behind him, including, of course, Bruce's bandmates Little Stephen Van Zanant,

and Patty Scialfa, Patty, of course, also being Bruce's wife. The fact that they're all holding hands is really getting to me. Because I distinctly remember thinking that Bruce Springsteen is not telling us to rise up. He is not ordering us to rise up in his capacity as a representative of the state. He is not commanding us to rise up in his capacity as a representative of the church. He is pleading. He is pleading with us. He is singing, come on, rise up, and all he can do is hope. that we do.

And we did, though we sure are lucky we had his help. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 33rd episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s, colon the 2000s. And this week we are discussing The Rising by Bruce Springsteen from his 2002 album also called The Rising. Even the pronunciation of the word for here feels freighted with tenderness and drama. Come on up for the rise.

It probably doesn't matter. But under these circumstances in particular, let's all extend as much grace as possible to each other and say that, sure, the way Bruce Springsteen sings, Fur matters if it matters to you. We got to do an ad break like now. We got to do an ad break like 15 minutes ago, really.

We don't even have time to joke about how bad we need an ad break. I'm serious. Okay, I got to tell you, this episode got heavier than I anticipated, and also it was going to be about Beautiful Day by YouTube, but now it's not. And when I realized how heavy it had gotten, I immediately kicked into overdrive trying to manufacture some whimsy to subtly offset the heaviness, right? But then the whimsy got way out of hand, and I initially wrote more than 5,000 words before getting to this point to my saying the name of the song this episode is about, which I believe is a new personal record. And so to get the pre-song announcement portion of this script back under the 5,000 word mark, I cut an 800-word whimsical digression about how Drake, the rapper,

Drake should have retired immediately after appearing on the 2009 remix to the fabulous song, Throw It in the Bag. And I do believe that. I had visual aids and everything. It broke my heart to cut that. Murder your darlings. cut that and that got the pre my name is rob harvilla portion of this script under 5,000 words specifically to 4,990 words, which is honestly incredible. And I'm not telling you this now because I'm looking for approval,

but I will say that when I cut it, I immediately messaged my long-suffering editor Justin Sales on Slack and I told him I cut it. And that time, I was definitely looking for approval. Anyway, I cut and pasted the 800 word Drake retirement digression into a Google Doc, so you'll be hearing from me on that topic later. We don't have time for whimsy at that length and scale this week, alas. In fact, we have time for exactly five seconds of whimsy. And so, here are John and John, if they might be giants, appearing on British television in 1989. Of course, you come from America, so do you have an American dream? every night

That's it That's all the whimsy we have time for Bruce Springsteen All right Who needs a detailed laborious album by album primer On Bruce Springsteen Nobody, that's who

Here's what Bruce Springsteen is up to In 1992 It is the spring of 1992 And I'm watching Saturday Night Live And it would appear That Bruce Springsteen is going through something But then again, so was I. Look at all those chains, though. Bruce is rocking there. It's quite stylish. This is Bruce on S&L in May 1992. He is playing a song called 57 channels, parenthesis,

and nothing on. Close parenthesis. It's about how he hates cable TV. It was topical at the time. I believe that in this moment Bruce is 42 years old, and I am 13. And I would hate to tell you how old I thought 42 was when I was 13. I feel pretty decrepit right now as an older than 42-year-old person, but I don't feel half as old as I thought 42 would feel when I was 13.

Back then, I thought being 42 made you the fucking cryptkeeper. Also, at 13, I owned a Pearl Jam CD, and therefore I assumed I'd never need to own any Bruce Springsteen CDs, which is pretty stupid.

But it's also bad news for Bruce in the short run because on March 27, 1992, Bruce Springsteen simultaneously released two separate albums, Guns and Roses, Use Your Illusion style. These albums are called Human Touch and Lucky Town, respectively. 57 channels is on Human Touch, but I like Lucky Town a little more. Lucky Town's got some great weepy father and son type action. These are Bruce Springsteen's 9th and 10th studio out. albums, respectively, his third album is born to run, his sixth album is Nebraska, his seventh album is born in the USA, et cetera. Good gravy. What an absurd discography already. Let's not even get into it.

Nevertheless, as a snotty, dipshit alt-rockin teenager, I might have told you that Bruce Springsteen, he was cool. He used to be cool. But nowadays, he's more of a VH1 type artist. MTVs, got your cutting-edge alternative rock, yes, your pearl jams and so forth, whereas VH1 skews a little older and more dignified, with softer and gentler and less alternative rock. Sting, Bonnie Ray, Tom Petty, veteran artists. And that's also pretty stupid of me, but even if it's entirely subconscious, by 14, I've already listened to hundreds of hours of Bruce Springsteen. This man's music is woven into the very fabric of society, especially if you enjoyed a hearty,

late 20th century Midwestern upbringing, like I did. There's a jukebox that only plays Bruce Springsteen songs hardwired into my brain. These songs, you know the songs, these songs provide the soundtrack to at least 30% of my active childhood memories. And so any of those songs, even now, will trigger this massive.

massive, overwrought, adrenalized Pavlovian super sentimental reaction in me. Right? Like, I'm apt to burst into tears right now if you play me like, Tunnel of Love. Tunnel of love is the title track to Bruce's

eighth album, which is not as good as his previous seven albums, but geez, man, the glorious simplicity there. The modest, unapologetic, super poppy cheesiness of that synthesizer riff. Do do do do the dopamine hit.

The classic beer commercial nostalgia thunderbolt I get from Tunnel of Love. It just floors me every time. Can I tell you one thing? Recently we were driving to my son's 12th birthday party. I got a minivan full of 12-year-olds that I got to transport to the laser thing. And the kids pile in and I start the car and the Tunnel of Love album starts playing. This song is called Ain't Got You. This is what starts playing.

Bruce Springsteen is wearing a bolow tie on the cover of Tunnel of Love. And I think you'll agree that the bolow tie is audible. I got the fortunes of heaven and diamonds and gold. I got all the bonds, baby, that the bank could hold. And all the 12-year-olds had been chattering, but suddenly there's dead silence in the minivan at the sound of Bruce Springsteen's voice. The kids are stupefied. And I can feel it.

Man, I can feel the revulsion. I can smell the old man's stink. And I just know my son's friends are looking at me like I'm the cryptkeeper. This is honestly my peak dad moment. I have achieved dad nirvana. And my son is like, dad. And I'm like, yes. And he's like, can we listen to something else?

And I'm like, yes. And so, then we listen to Weird Al Yankovic's theme song to the Captain Underpants movie. Yeah, but so much like the Captain Underpants theme song, Bruce Springsteen melodies, Bruce Springsteen riffs are not complicated. They are not fancy. They are not clever. They are not trying to impress you. Dancing in the dark, hungry, hard, bad lands, glory days, even born to run itself.

These riffs, these songs get by, on blunt force repetition, on sweat, on unstoppable physical force, on relentless charm. In my experience, anyway, you remember them forever. You hear these melodies in your head constantly, even if you've not heard the song in years. And even still, you also miss those riffs when they're gone, when Bruce strategically withholds them. Because he's got a pugnacious punk rock side, too. It's just that his version of punk rock sounds way different from anyone else's. Yo, nobody in human history has worked harder than Bruce Springsteen to romanticize, to rhapsodize about all the wonderful places where the highway might go.

And that's what makes it so quietly cataclysmic when he stops rhapsodizing. when the adrenaline abruptly runs dry, when the highway leads you nowhere. This grim magic trick worked when he did it on Nebraska. They made a movie about that album. I ain't seen it yet. I'm busy. Is it good? Is Mr. Grumpy, chef muscles guide? Good.

And also this grim magic trick works here on Bruce Springsteen's 11th album, released in 1995 and called The Ghost of Tom Jode. Sitting down here in the camp and searching for the ghost of Tom Joad, of course, being a noble, downtrodden character from the gorgeously austere 1939 John Steinbeck novel, The Grapes of Wrath. And honestly, if Bruce Springsteen's going to write a whole song, a whole album about a book on one of my high school summer reading lists, better the Grapes of Wrath than like Ethan Frome or Winesburg, Ohio. But yeah, the sound of this record floors me every time also, for a different reason than Tunnel of Love, for a 180-degree polar opposite-type reason. It's the near silence here. It's the dignified solemnity. It's how little sonic and spiritual space Bruce is taking up.

It's the sound of one of the biggest rock stars of all time trying to make himself as small as possible. If you want to wildly oversimplify it, Bruce Springsteen's got two types of songs, explosions and implosions. And as brash and bonkers and exhilarating as the explosions are, as hard as they hit you, even if it's the 3,000th time that it's hitting you, as elated as I get,

even now, every time I hear born to run, every time it hits that mid-song countdown, every time it hits the key changed. Look, I should, yeah, This moment right here. The fact that Bruce Springsteen can do that. The fact that Bruce Springsteen still does that with the East Street band, every show, every night, the existence, the canonization of explosion Bruce only magnifies the power of implosion, Bruce. His loudest and most bombastic songs make his quietest and meekest songs hit harder and vice versa.

The Born to Run album magnifies the quiet power of. of Nebraska and vice versa. The bombast of Born in the USA magnifies the somber power of the ghost of Tom Jode and vice versa. That's a song off the ghost of Tom Jodd called Youngstown. That's in Ohio. smoke stacks reaching like the arms of God into a beautiful sky of soot and clay, the flowery poetry, but also the gritted teeth, plain spokenness of it, them smokestacks, not those smokestacks or the smokestacks. And if we're talking specifically about the American dream, Bruce Springsteen, as the

official spokesman, as the walking embodiment of the American dream, then it's tremendously important that Bruce Springsteen also explores the dark side of the American dream. He writes both explosion songs and implosion songs about the American dream. And even his explosion songs can be bitter. They can be angry. They can be downtrodden. They can be confrontational. Here in 2026, grown adults are still publicly expressing absolute shock. They're getting big mad when they realize that the song born in the USA is not necessarily entitled to. about how awesome and how easy it is to be born in the USA. I'll give you another example.

In the spring of 2001, Bruce Springsteen debuts a new song called American Skin. The full title is American Skin, 414 shots, end parenthesis. So this song appears in the 2001 HBO concert film live in New York City. This song is inspired by the 1999 police shooting of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 23-year-old West African immigrant with no criminal record living in New York City. He was stopped by four plainclothes NYPD officers. He reached for his wallet.

One officer mistook the wallet for a gun and opened fire, and all told the police fired 41 shots, hitting Amadu Diallo 19 times. The four policemen were tried for second-degree murder, and acquitted. And so the refrain, the hook, the insidious earworm here is just Bruce Springsteen in the East Street band, blankly going, 41 shot, 41 shot. The East Street band are invaluable here as not a Greek chorus. No, that's pretentious and also wrong. They are a distinctly American chorus. Is it a wallace? This is your life.

And unsurprisingly, this song generates a great deal of controversy. It generates anger. There are calls for boycotts. There are truly out-of-pocket denunciations of Bruce Springsteen by spokesman for the pleas. I'd say you can guess what some people have to say about it, but hopefully you can't guess. New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani at a rally, he says, quote, there are still people trying to create the impression that the police officers are guilty, and they are going to feel strongly about that.

End quote. There is some booing when American skin is performed in the year 2000 at Madison Square Garden in New York City during Bruce Springsteen's 10-night residence at Madison Square Garden. It is made clear to Bruce that many people would prefer he not play this particular song in this particular city. Unsurprisingly, he plays it anyway. It ain't no secret, no secret, my friend.

You get killed just for living in your American skin. And I woke up just this morning with that part of American skin in my head, that line and that echo. It ain't no secret, it ain't no secret. this too is authority. This too contributes to Bruce Springsteen's aura of authority, his reputation as a rock star who's trying to speak directly to the American people, who's trying to preach a message of hope and resilience and togetherness. He wants us to know him, trust him, love him, and believe him. But he's not afraid to confront us, to upset us, to anger us, some of us. American skin is a New York City song

too. But even here, even in tragedy, the best thing about New York City is you and me. In 2016, Bruce Springsteen published his autobiography. It's called Born to Run. Of course it is. And here is Bruce writing about what he did on 9-11. He was in New Jersey. Quote, I sat like the rest of the country, transfixed by a television screen, where the unimaginable was occurring, feeling like anything, truly anything, could or might happen next. We were untethered and skimming across deadly and absolutely unpredictable waters as I saw the towers fall, such an impossible and confounding event that the newsman on the scene could not conceive of what he was witnessing and did not report that that was what was happening.

End quote. He goes for a drive. Bruce drives out to the beach and he just sits. And then he says, quote, After a short while, I headed home to join Patty, his wife, and pick up our children from school. As I drove over the gravel of the Beach Club parking lot, I hesitated before pulling into traffic on Ocean Boulevard.

Just then, a country. car care careening off the Rumson Seabright Bridge shot past its window down and its driver, recognizing me, shouted, Bruce, we need you. I sort of knew what he meant, but, dot, dot, dot, end quote. Shout out that guy. That is a truly wild thing to yell at literally Bruce Springsteen on literally 9-11. But that doesn't make that guy. wrong. The 12th Bruce Springsteen album is released in July 2002. It is called The Rising. The first 16 seconds go like this. And all of that, all 16 seconds of that is tremendously important, in my opinion. The downcast opening that quickly snaps out of it. The modest, unapologetic,

super simple, distinctly Springsteenian ascending cheesiness of that string-driven ringedness of that string-driven riff. Do do, do, do do do do do. This also triggers in me a massive, overwrought, adrenalized Pavlovian super sentimental reaction. This song is called a Lonesome Day. The most important part of Lonesome Day is when Bruce and his American chorus just sing, It's All Right, It's All Right, Yeah, over and over. And there is no more American concept than fake it till you make it. Now is there. Now I can be reasonable usually about Bruce Springsteen.

I can acknowledge the overwrought silliness of some of the hero worship that accrues around this person, the eye-rolling dudes rock grandiosity wafting off this person. Myself, I don't even self-identify as a hardcore Springsteen fan, mostly out of respect. Mostly because I have at least a vague sense of what being a hardcore Springsteen fan might entail. And I ain't got what it takes. But I cannot be reasonable about The Rising. This record makes me wobbly? Wobbly.

I will try to think of a better word, but I won't. The second song on The Rising is called Into the Fire. In his autobiography, Bruce writes, quote, Of the many tragic images of that day, the picture I couldn't let go of was of the emergency workers going up the stairs as others rushed down to safety. The sense of duty, the courage, ascending into what? The religious image of ascension,

the crossing of the line between this world, the world of blood, work, family, your children, the breath in your lungs, the ground beneath your feet, all that is life, and the next flooded my imagination. If you love life or any part of it, the depth of their sacrifice is unthinkable and incomprehensible. Yet what they left behind was tangible. Death, along with all its anger, pain and loss, opens a window of possibility for the living. It removes the veil that the ordinary gently drapes over our eyes. Renewed sight is the hero's last loving gift to those left behind. End quote.

Bruce Springsteen is about to sing the words, Up the Stairs into the Fire. And it is a lifetime's work, in my experience, to wrap your head around it, to even begin to understand that up the stairs into the fire is not a metaphor. It is not particularly flowery language. It is not figurative language. It's just reporting. It's just where those people went. This is track two, dude. We've only just begun. If you catch me in a certain mood, and I'm in that mood right now, I'll tell you that the rising is the heaviest record

ever made, that you can hear, that you can feel the constant crushing weight of the task Bruce Springsteen has set out for himself here. He's trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. He's trying to glue our nation's shattered psyche back together. He's going to yell, come on, rise up at us until we actually do it. Track six is called Empty Sky. I don't understand how anyone has ever made it all the way through this record. I certainly don't understand how I ever did.

And as harsh, as harrowing as this record can be, as an emotional experience, I am grateful to The Rising for its nuanced portrait of grief. The taxonomy of grief Bruce Springsteen assembles here. From the personal to societal and from the tender-hearted to the vindictive, there are quick little lines scattered throughout this album that grapple with rage. And that reflects, let's say, that we'll put a boot in your ass. It's the American Way mentality.

the what do you mean you can't repeat the past? Of course you can mentality. Springsteen's got lines like better ask questions before you shoot and may the living let us in before the dead tear us apart and I want a kiss from your lips. I want an eye for an eye. But amid the terrible grief here, amid the fury, amid the disbelief of an event so impossible and confounding that even the newsman on Bruce Springsteen's TV couldn't initially conceive of what was happening. For me, the hardest, the heaviest emotion that radiates off the rising is guilt. Guilt over not showing the kind of bravery, not making the kinds of sacrifices all those incomprehensively brave people made. And also survivors, guilt. For me, one of the heaviest songs

on the rising is called Nothing Man. half of the songs on the rising predate 9-11 and were not written explicitly about explicitly in reaction to 9-11 nothing man dates to 1994 and Bruce once described it as a soldier's song written from the perspective of a veteran a hero and an unlikely hero according to the hero himself and Springsteen being Springsteen because he can write a song as lyrically provided but musically raucous as born in the USA. Here he can very gently and soothingly rhyme My hometown paper with a misty cloud of pink vapor.

But nothing man does not elaborate on the heroism implied by the hometown paper or the violence of the cloud of pink vapor. It's about the emptiness, the nothingness that follows, the sense that after a cataclysmic event, even after a national, a global catastrophe, maybe you make the news, and maybe somebody in a bar wants to shake your hand, but the world goes on.

People find a way to go on, and maybe that's healthy, ultimately, that they can go on, but maybe you can't. And there's that classic Springsteen Tunnel of Love feeling again, the glorious simplicity, the cheesy but stirring little, synthesizer riff, but now it feels like 2,000 tons of steel

pressing down on your chest. But look, the whole record is not this heavy. That's why I can make it all the way through it. There are moments of not comic relief and not whimsy, but moments of levity, relative levity. In his memoir, talking about writing the album, Bruce says quote, I knew from the beginning, if I was going to continue to write thematically, my songs could not depend on simply being tied. to the event. They needed an independent life, a life where their internal coherency would be completely understood even if there'd been no 9-11. So I wrote rock music, love songs,

breakup songs, spirituals, blues songs, hit songs, and I allowed my theme and the events of the day to breathe and find their place within the framework I created. End quote. You got to make it to track 11, but there's even a party song. Conservatively, Bruce Springsteen has 400 songs exactly like this. I am not exaggerating. This dude is at least 400 songs with a chorus that goes, Meet Me at Mary's Place, we're going to have a party. This song, it's called Mary's Place, is default Bruce Springsteen.

If I was being rude, which I'm not, I'd call it Chat-G-PT Bruce Springsteen, which I won't, because even most default Bruce Springsteen songs are B or B plus songs at worst. But Mary's Place, coming 11 songs into the rising, we have earned the party at Mary's Place. But far more importantly, Bruce Springsteen has earned the right to invite us to Mary's Place and really earn the right to attempt to make this album at all. I can't feel nothing coming up behind.

We are once again running up the fire, non-metaphorically. I just don't know how Bruce Springsteen makes this album, how he writes these songs so convincingly, and sings them, so convincingly, and sings them so convincing. if he doesn't spend 30 years or so being Bruce Springsteen first, amassing this reputation, this authority, writing all these stadium anthems about American dreams, about American nightmares, about the best of us, about the worst of us, about the idea of us. You can't just show up and start writing about us. Until someone recognizes you on the street and yells, we need you, you can't write a song, album about us. You cannot personally implore us to rise up. You cannot write convincingly about

this particular theme at all. The theme being, how can we possibly move on from this? And even this language, spirits above and behind me, faces gone black, precious blood, fiery light. It's flowery, it's more poetic language, but it's not metaphorical. language. Did you catch Bruce a few minutes ago in his memoir saying, we wrote love songs, breakup songs, hit songs, et cetera? Hit songs is pushing it. The Rising, the album hits number one on the Billboard album chart. The Rising, the song peaks at number 52 on the Billboard singles charts, The Hot 100. And no other song on the album makes the Hot 100 at all. I picked The Rising as the song this episode is about because I figured that's the title you would

recognize. This is very much a full album experience. The rising as a nominal hit song depends on the cumulative effect, the heaviness, the gravity, the goodwill of the 14 songs surrounding it. To call this song the climax, the apex, even to call it the best or most important song on the album, all of that feels insufficient, or at least irrelevant. When I hear the rising, what I mostly think, what I mostly feel is this is a song that knows. And pretty soon, Bruce Springsteen and the East Street band are all singing no, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, over and over.

And maybe you're singing along to. And maybe that's as profound a moment lyrically as any other. In his memoir, Bruce writes, quote, first you write for yourself, always, to make sense of experience in the world around you. It's one of the ways I stay sane. Our stories, our books, our films are how we cope with the random trauma-inducing chaos of life as it plays. When that guy yelled out, Bruce, we need you. That was a tall order, but I knew what he meant. I needed something, someone, too. As I drove home on that lonely day to find my children, my life, my people, and you again,

I turned to the only language I've ever known to fight off the night terrors, real and imagined, time and time again. It was all I could do. End quote. And I recognize this as hyperbole. as melodrama. But I'm pretty sure that it might have been all Bruce could do, but I don't think anyone else could have done it. We are delighted to be joined once again by Stephen Hayden,

a critic and author in Podcasting Royalty, subscribe to his Substack Newsletter, Evil Speakers. And check out his latest book, There Was Nothing You Could Do, Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA and the End of the Heartland. Thanks so much for being here, Steve. Rob, it's good to see you outside of our cult meeting for Midwestern rock critics. That's right. It is.

Do it out in the public now. It's a fairly robust group we've got going. Just members swelling every day. It's a growth industry. It's like the skulls of flannel shirts. Steely Dan, T-shirts and whatnot. Yes, we've got a dress code, basically. It's unofficial, but still very angrily enforced.

Yes. your book, of course, is about born in the USA and sort of ends in the mid-80s with Bruce and sort of superstardom mode. But I wanted to start off, like, what do you make of Bruce in the late 80s and throughout the 90s? You know, you get human touch and Lucky Town. You get Tunnel of Love, of course, you get Ghost of Tom Joad. Like, what's your sense of what Bruce Springsteen was trying to do and trying to be, you know, at this point in his career, the late 80s and 90s prior to the rising? Yeah, you know, I think about Bruce in relation to the movie Superman 2, which I don't know if you've seen that. Sure.

Been a while, but sure. Yeah. If you remember the plot of that movie is that Superman decides that he wants to be a normal guy or go to slain. So he goes into this chamber at the fortress of solitude and he becomes a normal guy. And then at some point, the world goes to hell. And he realizes that he has to, you know, it's his destiny to be Superman. So he goes back in the chamber and gets his powers. back. And I think there's something similar with Bruce in the late 80s and 90s where after the

superstar of him a born in the USA and how that turned him into this cultural and in many ways political figure, he really wanted to go back to being just another singer-songwriter, you know, a guy in his 40s putting out an album every three or four years. And he almost was too good at that. You know, he became marginalized in a way that, as marginalized as Bruce Springsteen can be anyway, grew a goatee for a while, did that whole thing. And then you have the East Street band reunion at the end of the 90s, and then 9-11 happens. And that feels like the Superman 2 moment where he goes back in the chamber and puts the cape back on. Right.

Well, there's the famous story, of course. It's on 9-11, Bruce is driving around, and a guy passes him in a car or whatever and yelled out the window at Bruce Springs. They're like, we need you, Bruce. You know, it's a crazy story. It's like preposterous, I think, is the way I saw you describe it once. And I agree completely. Like, if that were in a movie, even with Superman, it would feel cheesy. You know, but my sense is that very few rock stars, like, even famous rock stars, like,

there are very few who rise to the We Need You level during a crisis like this. What do you think it was about Bruce Springsteen specifically that made him, you know, the rock star, everyone felt they needed suddenly in this moment. Yeah, I mean, I think it's worth looking back at how Bruce was looked at at that time, which is different than how he's looked at now in 2026. You know, now, you know, Bruce is a partisan figure. You know, he's either someone you love because of what he stands for or you can't stand him because of what he stands for. Whereas I think back then, he was an ideological guy. You know, he's someone that you could look at his songs and you could understand what he was interested in, what he cared about, how he saw America.

But he wasn't necessarily partisan. And that's a distinction that we don't really make now. But the way I would describe it is, like in the 80s on the born-in-the-USA tour, Bruce wasn't a guy who was going to tell you to vote for Walter Mondale from the stage. But he was going to encourage you to donate to the local food bank. Sure. So this idea that you should help your fellow person, but that there was almost this politics beyond. politics, which is how we put it in one interview, that you could help people without getting in the muck of electoral proceeds and all that stuff.

So I think at the time of the rising, there was a consensus of people looking at Bruce, no matter where you fell on the political divide, that he was someone that represented America, that he represented and that he spoke about American idealism, and that he was someone almost like a political leader in that when there was a disaster, that you would want that person to to chime in. This is before Twitter, but you know, you want that person to tweet out, not even a take on the event, but just words of solace, words of encouragement. And I think that more than any of the rock star, surely Bruce Springsteen was that person

at that time. I think another important element there was that Bruce hadn't made an album with the East Street band, really since born in USA. And I think that there was a desire at that moment. in time for people to look to the 20th century and to latch on to things that were familiar and that made them feel like the America that they knew hadn't completely disappeared. And I think that element of it, beyond just what he was writing about, just the fact that he was with that band again and he was making a rock record, the gesture of that, I think,

was also really important. Did you personally need Bruce Springsteen in this moment? comment, Steve? No, I didn't, you know, I was a Bruce fan at that time. I saw the reunion tour with the East Street Band. That was the first time I'd ever seen Bruce with, the first time I ever saw Bruce, but also the first time with the East Street band.

So I was definitely plugged into the romance of Bruce music at that time. But I think I was, I was a young man, you know, angry, cynical. I think I was wary of the coverage of that record a little bit. The Rising, yeah. Of the Rising and how it was talked about the Messianic overtones that were not even overtones, really. I mean, they were explicit, you know, they were like at the forefront of the whole thing. I think I was more into like the accidental 9-11 records at that time. You know, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Of course. Kid A by Radiohead. even the U-2 record, all that you can't leave behind, which... Beautiful day. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting to think about U-2 not making inexplicit. Because they're the other... Incredible restraint.

But, you know, they put out all that you can't leave behind in 2000. And, you know, on the album cover, they're at an airport. You know, like, there's this sort of weird resonance that if they had done that deliberately, it would have been... If they had done that knowing about 9-11 and the record came out like six months later, it would have been offensive if they had done that. Similar to, you know, if Jeff Tweedy had made Yankee-Otel Foxtrot, that album came out after 9-11, but it was made before and had been moving out online.

Right. If he put a skyscraper on the top of his, on the cover of his record, or he wrote Ashes of American Flags, like knowing about 9-11, Anyone who loved Wilco would have thought, oh, this is way too on the nose. But the fact that they did that before 9-11, and then you could listen to certain lyrics and feel that they were communicating

what it felt like to live through that time. To me, I think as a younger man of 24, I think I was, that just spoke to me more, I think, than the Bruce record. Right, because a couple of years back, you ranked every Springsteen. album for Up Rocks, you know, and I believe the Rising was the 16th best Springsteen record. And like, Springsteen's catalog is absurd, you know, even prior to the point we're talking about. But like, so what you, what this doesn't work for you is the Messianic, the on the nose, the I am making a

9-11 record, you know, literalness of the Rising for you. That's where you're kind of skeptical or just not as into it. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I want to tread lightly here because I think that the rising is a really important record to people who were in much closer vicinity to 9-11 than I was. People that lived in New York, people that knew people directly that were affected by it. And I think for them, the record had a much deeper connection to it. And I totally understand that and respect it. As a person who didn't live in New York at the time, and as a music critic, You know, with Bruce Springsteen, there's this divide between descriptive and prescriptive songwriting.

In descriptive songwriting, I would describe with him as being songs that are about characters that give the listener a sense of what it feels like to live in their skin. Thunder Road or anything, right. Yeah, or Nebraska and Born in the USA, you know, those albums, I think, are the examples that come to mind for me, where there's politics on those albums, but it's in the subtext. And it's also a kind of politics that transcends the moment. So you can listen to Nebraska. And when that album came out, a lot of people said,

this is about Reagan's America. You know, the social safety net's been cut. And all these people are living desperate lives. And Bruce is writing about those kinds of people. But you can listen to that album in 2026 and feel like it's about America now. You know, there's a, there's a universal feel to those songs. because he's writing about these characters, first and foremost, rather than any particular issue or, you know, political movement that might be happening at the time. And I think with Bruce's songwriting, around the time of the rising, although I think there is some descriptive songs on there, even like the rising itself, the song, you know, it's a song about this rescue worker.

There's a character in that song. I do think in the 21st century, it starts to change a little bit, and it becomes more prescriptive. And it's more about communicating a message in a clear-cut way, or it's about achieving a certain desired result in the real world, like inspiring people to carry out a particular outcome. And I just find that that's not as strong to me. It doesn't speak to me as much personally with his music. No, I'm thinking about what you're saying about the late 80s and 90s, you know, it's not political. You know, the ghost of Tom Jod is an album with a very specific point of view. But as you're saying, it's like help people.

It's not really about politics per se. I mean, that record, it's an interesting comparison with The Rising because, I mean, the ghost of Tom Jod, the most lyrically dense album Bruce has ever made. I mean, it literally has its own bibliography in the line. Like, where Bruce is citing articles and books that he's drawing from the writing or something. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that album certainly has a political message to it. He's writing about immigrants.

He's writing about the border. People trying to make their way in America. I mean, in many ways, that album is as resonant now as it was in the mid-90s. But the broadness of The Rising as an album. And the broadness of that song, I think, it's a much different kind of. of songwriting. Clearly, one is meant for the stadium and one is not. And I'm not necessarily knocking the rising as a song on those grounds. I mean, I think it's a rousing song. I mean, there's a Pavlovian reaction. If you hear that song in an arena or a stadium and you don't

feel a surge of adrenaline. I mean, you might want to check your vital signs. I mean, it's your body reacts to it unknowingly. But to me, I think that's a very telling contrast there of songwriting styles. That, you know, the Ghost of Tom Jod is a record made by a guy who is not interested in reaching millions upon millions of people. And that record didn't reach that. That's one of the worst selling albums of his career. Whereas The Rising, in terms of the lyrics and also in terms of how it sounds, the production

of it, which is part of what I don't like about it, really. I mean, we've been talking about lyrics so far. I don't love the sound of The Rising. It sounds very much like that. It's like a micro era in music of like the late 90s and early 2000s, that CD rock era where things are mixed really loud. And it just feels like the production is like a granite wall hitting you over the face. I mean, like Californication by the Red Hat Chili Peppers,

I feel like this definitive example of this. Sure. But I think The Rising, it's not as extreme as that, but it has some of that quality to it, I think. So that's part of what I don't love about the album. I was going to ask you about Brendan O'Brien, who produced The Rising, and he's obviously like an alternative rock guy.

He's worked with Soundgarden, Rage Against the Machine. Like, is The Rising, among the other things of The Rising is trying to be, is this Bruce Springsteen trying to be a little cooler, you know, a little more alternative or at least current as far as what he thinks is happening in rock. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't use the word cooler,

but I think definitely contemporary would be right on. And I think he was pretty open about that, about how, you know, he was producing his own records with John Landau, his longtime manager, Chuck Plotkin was involved in the production of those early records. He's one of the studio engineers that Bruce has worked with.

And, you know, Bruce was pretty open about feeling like, you know, he hadn't kept up, with record production for mainstream rock and that he wanted to work with someone who could update his sound a little bit. What's interesting about The Rising is that the album he made a few records later, Magic, which came out in 2007, I think is a much better example of him making music that is in conversation with current rock trends. I mean, you listen to Magic and it's clear that he is aping arcade fire and the killers and how those bands

aped him. It's through a couple different looking glasses where they're trying to sound like born in the USA and he's trying to sound like arcade fire and the killers trying to sound like born in the USA. Right, right. But it works really well. And that's another album that I think is pretty political. But I think it's not as overt to me. And it's not as, you know, there's a thing with Bruce Springsteen where there's the singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen, and then there's the National Monument, Bruce Springsteen.

And I'm a fan of the singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen. You know, I think he's the best storytelling lyricist in rock music ever. You know, in terms of writing a song that you can see in your head like a movie, there's no one better than Bruce. But then there's the other side of Bruce where he is. more in stump speech mode, you know, political sloganeering type mode. And I just find that to be less interesting generally, even though I understand, I think the prescriptive aspect of that is helpful to people. Again, a lot of people love The Rising.

I think that record provided solace for a lot of people. And what more can you say about a song than that? That it helps people get through a hard time in their life. So I don't want to totally dismiss that. But again, on a personal level, that's not the Bruce Springsteen music that sticks with me the most. I guess in that vein, it's we should mention, like, as we speak right now, you know, Bruce has got a new song out, Streets of Minneapolis, very, very, very explicit point of view, you know, just calling out Trump, gnome, everybody, just, it's a protest song. It's very angry.

And I think even Springsteen fans, there's a divide between like, is this a great Bruce Springsteen song? And is this an important Bruce Springsteen song? Like, it's awesome that he did this, that he's showing this solidarity, you know, that this song has sort of a dual purpose. And its purpose as a statement sort of overrides maybe. Its purpose is just a piece of music. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

Yeah. And that's an interesting case because that's almost like a reverse rising to me, where I listen to it. And the music critic in me is saying a lot of things that you're saying. I feel like that would be a better song if he were somehow able to write about Renee Good or Alex Prattie, like their Bruce Springsteen characters. Like, if you could somehow inhabit them. Humanize them. Yeah.

Which he's not able to do. But I live in the Twin Cities. You know, I know the neighborhoods that these masked goons have run roughshod over. You know, I know the record stores in the background. And I've seen the Dodo shop where Alex Prattie was killed. And so I can also appreciate the prescriptive quality of that of hearing a song where he references Nicolette Avenue and appreciating that and appreciating the acknowledgement of it. So, yeah, there is a divide a little bit between the art and the gesture. And the gesture isn't unimportant, even if the art isn't of the caliber that he's capable of.

Just to wrap up, I was trying to think, and maybe you can help me. Is there another record as explicit as the rising in saying, this is my 9-11 record? This is my attempt to heal the nation after 9-11. Like, as you say, my mind goes to you too or Wilco, but the timeline is off. You know, like, does this record stand alone in being as explicit as it is about what it's trying to do? Yeah, I mean, I have a hard time thinking of a record like it. I mean, and I don't know how explicit he was necessarily about saying, like, I'm healing the nation with this album. Right.

I do think, again, like if you look at the media coverage of this album at the time, the combination of 9-11 and Bruce getting back to making Bruce Springsteen music. for lack of a better term. I think it was a pretty powerful combination. I mean, people at the time I think were pretty dismissive of the work he had done since born in the USA. It was almost like, okay, now Bruce

can stop screwing around. It took 9-11, but now he's going to make a record with the East Street band. And I do think that the in addition to the lyrical content of the album, I do think that just the fact that Bruce was doing that,

being with the East Street band, I think, was so important at the time. You know, because a lot of rock music was like that in the early 2000s. I mean, the strokes and all the New York bands at the time had a very similar vibe of, we're bringing back what New York was like in the 70s. Right, right. And it was reminding people living in New York, and also people who just love New York from around the world, that New York isn't destroyed, you know,

that there's still people doing things that we recognize with New York. I mean, like the New York Yankees were in the, were in the World Series that year. People were cheering for the Yankees all over the country as perverse as that is. Yes. You know, but people were looking for these signs that the America that they remembered was still around. And Bruce Springsteen is America in rock and roll form. I mean, there's no other artist that signifies the country. I think especially at that time.

And in a way, I think it's hard to relate to that now because there's really no artist. that you could point to. Would people say that to Taylor Swift? I mean, I think... Benson Boone. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.

Benson Boone, please do backflips and heal us. Backflips, yeah. But, you know, we just had a situation where there were two Super Bowl halftime shows. Right. We can't free on a halftime show, even though one of the most popular artists in the world was playing. But even there, it's like, no, we have to segregate ourselves. into our little camps. So I think then just to have an artist like Bruce Springsteen

where you had a wide group of people, not everybody, certainly, but a lot of people looking at him as a symbol of America and looking for reassurance that that symbol was still relevant and it was still intact and that they could congregate it around it and feel a sense of unity. Thank you so much, Steve. This has been wonderful. I really appreciate your time.

Well, thank you. Hopefully that will be helpful. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Stephen Hayden. Thanks to our producers, Olivia Creary and Justin Sales. Additional production helped by Kevin Pooler, animations and graphics by Chris Callitin. Additional art by Matt James. And a special thanks, as always, to Cole Kushna.

And thanks to you for listening. And now, let's all go listen to The Rising by Bruce Springsteen. We'll see you next week.