[BADROTOFINGER]

The great thing about some American music is that it just screams, and sometimes whispers, the American experience. Some perfomers have it, guys like CCR, Lynard Skynard, and John Cougar Mellencamp, while others only wish they had it, like Bruce Springsteen...JFK

[Paul Atreides]

Indeed, religion is the only way to explain the Pauline tone of the Return of the Boss.

Just try criticizing David Lynch's version of Dune, and see what grief you'll get. Some people get attached to one person and can see no wrong in anything that person does.

[shaggy eel]

,,, when "Born in the USA" hit around 1984, TIME magazine had Bruceee on the cover of an issue. If I remember rightly, it had the comment "he was going to take the US by storm overnight - it took him ten years to do it." Something like that. Is he doing much different to what he did then?

[Clemenza]

Some perfomers have it, guys like CCR

True. I played "Hey Tonight" twice on the jukebox yesterday, a song that doesn't get enough airplay.

Lynard Skynard

"Ooh that smell, can't you smell that smell" OF SKYNARD'S OVERRATED PILE OF HORSEDUNG! The only song that "reaches me" is "Simple Man" off of the first album.

and John Cougar Mellencamp

Others may flame you, but I will agree with you here with one reservation: Mellencamp has been very inconsitent throughout his career (and a real asshole, according to many who've met him). Nevertheless, when the Sage of Seymour is at his best(American Fool, Scarecrow, Lonesome Jubilee., he blows Springsteen away.

[x]

Bruce was an original when he started. His songs were a mixture of ingenuous teenage tunes and something more Dylanesque. But he convinced himself that he was Woody Guthrie reborn, and lost the originality. Springsteen's later work is in that "the poetry is in the pity" vein and it doesn't always work. Too often what he thinks poetic or evocative is too cookie-cuttered and predictable. That stoic-affirmative-populist or poignant-suffering manner is too one-note. And it usually didn't capture a large public. And maybe it's easier to stay in that downbeat-downtrodden groove than to try something new. But he's not a bad man and has some talent.