Sublime

“Springsteen believed deeply in the inherent worth and dignity of popular music and in his own responsibility to its traditions, which he was convinced had saved him from a life of frustration and fury,” Marsh wrote.

Once we incorporate the perspective of the excluded—in this case, Brit—priorities reorder.

Meat Loaf might have been sincere, but he was just a fat goofball who was cool in spite of himself. But Bruce was trying to save you. He appealed to the kind of desperate intellectual who halfway believed that—when not recording or touring—Springsteen actually went back to New Jersey to work at a car wash. Before he even utters his lyrics, people

inchoate

If I were directing a movie, I’d call this exploration “Jim does what he damn well likes.”