Tunnel Of Love

About

Bruce Springsteen has said that, after 20 years writing about the man on the road, he was ready to write about “the man in the house.” The result? <i>Tunnel of Love</i>, his eighth studio album, and his first since the success of <i>Born in the U.S.A.</i> Released in 1987, <i>Tunnel of Love</i> found Springsteen exploring his characters’ inner lives. It was a conscious attempt by Springsteen to grow and evolve as a songwriter, and to meet the needs of his maturing fanbase. The album was also a deliberate attempt to step back into a more introspective place after the intergalactic explosion of 1984’s <i>Born in the U.S.A.</i> Instead of hopping on the hamster wheel of pop stardom and trying to create what he viewed as the impossible goal of repeating his previous level of success, Springsteen wanted to direct the focus towards his work as a composer and songwriter—while also turning his attention to matters of the heart. <i>Tunnel of Love</i> turned out to be a deeply introspective collection of songs about men, women, and their relationships. To this day, fans still refer to it as “the divorce album,” as Springsteen—who’d wind up splitting from wife Julianne Phillips nearly a year after <i>Tunnel of Love</i>’s release—basically wrote an entire record about his marriage falling apart. But, as usual with Springsteen, the details are more complex than that. The album’s fulcrum is “Brilliant Disguise,” a poignant, lilting paean about the fragility of trust in a relationship, about the importance of vulnerability, and about the delicate balance between the two. The album’s other songs delve into different views of this eternal quest for love and identity—some darker, some lighter: There’s the inner turmoil of “One Step Up”; the push and pull of commitment in “Tougher Than the Rest” or “All That Heaven Will Allow”; and the fear and emotional rollercoaster described in “Tunnel of Love” and “Spare Parts.” <i>Tunnel of Love</i> would be Springsteen’s final studio album of the 1980s, and it marked the start of a new phase in his career, personally <i>and</i> sonically: He did much of the instrumentation himself, with cameos from assorted E Street Band members on various songs. It was the first hint that the Boss and his ferocious bandmates were about to take a lengthy break—making this a “divorce album” in more ways than one.

via Apple Music