Wrecking Ball

About

Bruce Springsteen’s 2012 album <i>Wrecking Ball</i> is a blend of traditional music, rock, gospel, and folk—all of it alongside sample, drum loop, and a 16-bar rap interlude performed by E Street Choir member Michelle Moore. Lyrically, Springsteen turns his attention here to a new generation of Americans struggling to stay afloat—“from the shotgun shack to the Superdome,” as he sings in the fiery “We Take Care of Our Own.” With song titles like “Death to My Hometown,” “Shackled and Drawn,” and “This Depression,” Springsteen isn’t trying to hide the pervading discontent. “Wrecking Ball” began its life as a song written in honor of the closing shows at New Jersey’s Giants Stadium, but on record, it became a metaphor for the parts of society we hold dear—but that are knocked down and replaced by newer, shinier things that may or may not be better. And the couple depicted in “Easy Money,” a great duet between Springsteen and Patti Scialfa, feels sadly and distantly related to the protagonists in <i>Nebraska</i>’s “Atlantic City.” “Land of Hope and Dreams” had been in the E Street Band’s live-show repertoire for more than a decade, but had never been recorded. Using a popular gospel metaphor of a train as the vehicle that can carry the holy to salvation, Springsteen’s “Land of Hope and Dreams” train instead carries saints and sinner, losers and winner. He brings in a gospel choir at the end to reprise Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions’ “People Get Ready,” a 1965 song that similarly made use of the gospel train metaphor. It’s tighter and more disciplined than the onstage version. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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