Bruce Springsteen took a pretty big step this week. He released “Wrecking Ball,” a masterpiece of a rock album in which he sings about the troubles of our time more directly than he has before. Oh, and he did something else too. He adopted a generation: ours.
Over the past year or two, unease about the future has been one of the dominant themes in indie and alternative music. It has always been around to some extent, but it has really grown now. Music with this message was written for college students, and it was embraced by college students.
After all, lots of us have no idea how we’re going to break our way into a frighteningly slippery job market, and I would argue that these worries have aged today’s college students. And so, we turn to music.
One band which recently channeled these feelings is Fun. In all its theatrical glory, the band sang of a clash between youthful idealism and the pressure of securing your own future. At the same time, there is a rebelliousness to the album, a fighting spirit that seems to express a determination to fight the uncertainty of the future with all the unadulterated frustration that one can muster.
The album’s title track, “Some Nights,” was the perfect embodiment of this combination of anxiety and frustration ““ think of lyrics such as “What do I stand for? / Most nights I don’t know anymore” and “This is it, boys / This is war / What are we waiting for / Why don’t we break the rules already?”
There was ““ and still is ““ plenty of unease to go around. But there was no leader to this musical movement, no standard bearer for this generation and its bands to get behind. Enter Springsteen.
With “Wrecking Ball,” the Boss became the musical parent of this generation. This is a pretty grandiose claim, but I think it has got weight. In the album, Springsteen sings of troubled times and worries over the future from the perspective of a man already trying to provide for a family.
Perhaps the best embodiment example of this theme on the album is “Jack of All Trades,” one of the best written songs of the year and probably one of Springsteen’s best of his career.
Nestled into a simple piano melody are lyrics that express the same types of fears expressed in “Some Nights” as well as a sad determination to make it work anyway: “I mow your lawn / Clean the leaves out your drain / I’ll mend your roof / To keep out the rain / I’ll take the work / That God provides / I’m the jack of all trades / Honey, we’ll be alright.”
In the end, that song captures the worst fears of our generation. Students don’t want to become the jack of all trades in the song. But “Wrecking Ball” extends a hand to the younger generation, both to its bands and their listeners. Springsteen has managed to capture the musical hearts and minds of two generations as an active musician, something few artists have been able to do. Whether Springsteen intended to adopt this generation with his new album, I’m not sure. But he did.
Have you adopted any generations lately? Email Bain at abain@media.ucla.edu. “B-sides” runs every Monday.