“It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.”

　　Bruce Springsteen is a force of nature.

　　You may not like his music, his politics may annoy you, but there is no denying the charisma, exuberance, and raw power Bruce Springsteen brings to the studio and the stage. That music consists of 21 studio albums, 23 live albums, and 66 music videos. His accolades include 20 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, and an Academy Award. A documentary film will launch on Hulu and Disney+ this October. Springsteen turned 75 years young on September 23, 2024, and he recently said there are no plans for a “Farewell Tour.”

　　Bruce Springsteen became a voice of the working-class, thanks to his unsparing observations about what life was like for those without a silver spoon. But the New Jersey shore, factory jobs, hot rods, and motorcycles are just the context in which he develops his universal themes. Interestingly enough, Springsteen himself was never a member of the working class, many of whom spend their entire lives on the factory floor like his father and several of his friends. He began playing with bar bands before he could drive.

　　The word “dream(s)” is ubiquitous throughout Springsteen’s oeuvre. “Born to Run” was Springsteen’s break-out album and when Springsteen says we are “born to run,” he is not talking about escapism; he means we, as human beings, are programmed to push forward—and to keep pushing—to something more. Given the human condition and the world in which we live, it may be excruciatingly difficult, requiring a special kind of heroism that is not daunted by the obstacles. He is not willing to “live in the in-betweens,” but there are no guarantees. Springsteen has said that at times, he is “writing big, even operatic.”

　　In 1974, Springsteen’s reputation received a considerable boost when influential music critic Jon Landau wrote, “I saw rock and roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” He continued, “When his two-hour set ended I could only think, can anyone really be this good? … Can rock’n’roll still speak with this kind of power and glory?”

　　In 2021, Springsteen sold his song catalog to Sony Music Group for at least $500 million. Forbes now estimates he has joined the ranks of billionaires Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift. He did not come by it easily. He grew up along the poverty line in Freeport, New Jersey with an alcoholic, mentally ill father; his mother held the family together. Springsteen was raised Catholic but left the church after eighth grade, yet he admits that the Church never quite left him. His songs often employ Catholic imagery and allusions.

　　There are undeniable religious dimensions to Springsteen’s music. He sees man’s fallen condition, but believes in the possibility of redemption through suffering, belief, and the hope of a future life.

　　He is an avid reader, despite only briefly attending college, or perhaps because he only briefly attended. One of his songs begins, “We busted out of class / had to get away from those fools / We learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school.” His literary influences include, but are not limited to, Leo Tolstoy, Cormac McCarty, Walt Whitman, Flannery O’Connor, John Steinbeck, Philip Roth, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Anton Chekov.

　　In a world of volatile egos, Springsteen’s E Street Band has experienced very few personnel changes since its birth in 1972. The members are all at the top of their game. Multi-talented guitarist Steven Van Zandt is Springsteen’s close friend and right-hand man; he also played Silvio Dante, the mob consigliere and strip club owner, for eight seasons on the acclaimed series “The Sopranos.” Conspicuous in the Springsteen sound are the saxophone and the prominent acoustic piano. Despite three electric guitars, the E Street Band doesn’t indulge in much ostentatious lead guitar work, only so much as fits the song such as “Adam Raised a Cain,” which, incidentally, slips in a reference to Steinbeck/Genesis 4:16:

　　In the Bible Cain slew Abel

　　and East of Eden he was cast

　　Springsteen has written a number of ballads that range from the melancholy “The River” to the dark. “Nebraska” is about a serial killer and the last line of the song is taken from the end of Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” also about a serial killer.

　　He has occasionally written on social and political concerns. His blockbuster “Born in the USA” is, in his words, frequently “misunderstood.” It was inspired after he read Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic, about the neglect of Vietnam veterans, also made into the 1989 film of the same name starring Tom Cruise. His most controversial song is the mediocre American Skin (41 Shots),” about the police shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999. When he began performing it, he lost considerable support from the law enforcement community, especially given that the police involved were acquitted in what was an admittedly tragic, but extremely confusing circumstance.

　　On September 11, 2001, Springsteen was inspired to write “The Rising,” his best social contribution. Springsteen said he was “dumbfounded” at the reports of first responders running up the stairs of the Twin Towers, as others ran down; accordingly, “The Rising” is written from the perspective of a firefighter and the chorus is a call to a national re-birth. One critic called it “a national Good Friday experience if there ever was one.” The song includes references to the Cross of St. Florian (the firefighter’s cross), Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and Mary Magdalen.

　　Can’t see nothin’ in front of me

　　Can’t see nothin’ coming up behind

　　I make my way through this darkness

　　I can’t feel nothing but this chain that binds me

　　Come on up for the rising / Come on up lay your hands in mine

　　………………………………………..

　　Lost track of how far I’ve gone

　　How far I’ve gone, how high I’ve climbed

　　On my back’s a sixty pound stone

　　On my shoulder a half mile line

　　………………………………………………..

　　Left the house this morning

　　Bells ringing filled the air

　　Wearin’ the cross of my calling

　　On wheels of fire I come rollin’ down here

　　But none of these ballads and social pieces are enough to explain Springsteen’s epic success. What has inspired audiences for decades now are his songs about human beings’ irrepressible yearning to push towards something higher, even transcendent. Our fallen nature often frustrates those efforts, but with both grace and persistence, redemption is still possible—even in our darkest moments.

　　In the “Born to Run” album, he had not yet achieved the full clarity of his vision, but it is emerging. The second verse of the title song begins, addressing “Wendy” (who may or may not be real):

　　Wendy, let me in / I wanna be your friend

　　I wanna guard your dreams and your visions

　　A later verse reveals that the song has something big in mind. It is a destination, but the passage is difficult, elusive, and involves unavoidable suffering:

　　Together Wendy, we can live with the sadness

　　………………………………………..

　　Oh, someday, girl, I dont know when

　　Were gonna get to that place

　　Where we really wanna go

　　and well walk in the sun

　　Springsteen wrote plenty of “crowd pleasers” but even those are less than celebratory as they reflect our tainted condition, for example. “Dancing in the Dark,” from his seventh studio album laments

　　You sit around getting’ older

　　Theres a joke here somewhere and it’s on me

　　Ill shake this world off my shoulders

　　Come on, baby, the laugh’s on me

　　The official video features a cameo appearance from a young Courtney Cox.

　　Despite the impediments, however, Springsteen’s soaring anthem vows “No Surrender.”

　　Well, we made a promise we swore we’d always remember

　　No retreat, baby, no surrender

　　Like soldiers in the winters night with a vow to defend

　　No retreat, baby, no surrender

　　Springsteen said that by the end of his fourth studio album, “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” he had found his “adult voice.” “The Promised Land” is melodically rich, but lyrically bleak. A storm, a tornado, will “blow everything down / That ain’t got the faith to stand its ground,” which includes “the dreams that break your heart,” especially those illusory dreams.

　　Well theres a dark cloud rising from the desert floor

　　I packed my bags and Im heading straight into the storm

　　Gonna be a twister to blow everything down

　　That aint got the faith to stand its ground

　　Blow away the dreams that tear you apart

　　Blow away the dreams that break your heart

　　Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and broken

　　The album features Springsteen’s most powerful anthem, “Badlands.” The title symbolizes the struggle that may keep us down but against which we continue to battle to reach the dream of a richer life. Here it becomes clearer that suffering is unavoidable but also transformative.

　　The song begins:

　　Lights out tonight

　　Trouble in the heartland

　　Got a head-on collision

　　Smashin’ in my guts, man

　　I’m caught in a crossfire

　　That I don’t understand

　　The chorus is intense, the melody reinforced by Van Zandt’s harmony:

　　Badlands, you gotta give it everyday

　　Let the broken hearts stand

　　As the price you’ve gotta pay

　　We’ll keep pushin’ till it’s understood

　　And these badlands start treating us good

　　Springsteen insists, “I don’t give a damn for the old played-out scenes,” but he admits the agony involved in stretching forward.

　　To talk about a dream, / try to make it real

　　You wake up in the night / with a fear so real

　　You spend your life waiting / For a moment that just don’t come.

　　He continues with simple but sage advice: “Well don’t waste your time waiting.” Though the path to a meaningful, even transcendent, life may be tortuous, forward progress is driven by vision, passion, and the human will.

　　I believe in the love that you gave me

　　I believe in the faith / that could save me

　　I believe in the hope / And I pray that some day it may raise me above these badlands.

　　The last stanza is written to encourage those who would dislodge themselves from inertia:

　　For the ones who had a notion / A notion deep inside

　　That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.

　　There are undeniable religious dimensions to Springsteen’s music. He sees man’s fallen condition but believes in the possibility of redemption through suffering, belief, and the hope of a future life, so much so, that he is useful in fighting perhaps the most difficult of the traditional “Seven Deadly Sins.” Sloth is debilitating and runs far deeper than ignoring the six-thirty a.m. alarm. It is a rejection of the gift of life, an indifference to what is vital, especially the intangible things that seem out of reach and hard to define. According to the Catholic Catechism, sloth is a “culpable lack of physical and spiritual effort.” It is characterized by despair, and, as Dorothy Sayers wrote, it is a “poisoning of the will.” Sloth denies that human beings are “born to run.”

　　Springsteen struggles against depression, perhaps a genetic gift from his impaired father, but sloth doesn’t seem to be his vice. Those whose life is stubbornly static might find encouragement in his music. A student commented that, despite his intelligence, he performed poorly in school; then he became a Springsteen fan, and within months, became a straight-A student. Motivation can be hard to find, especially since motivation is required to pursue it. But if no relief is found in Prozac, Wellbutrin, Clonazepam, Ritalin, Modafinil, Xanax, the “OnLine Therapy” app, or a new trainer at the gym, singing along with 50,000 fans in Barcelona may be just the right medicine.