Super Bowl Sunday afternoon I was prepping for halftime by listening to Bruce Springsteen’s new release, Working on a Dream, and wondering if the Boss would dare use any of the precious 12 minutes that night to showcase any of the new songs—despite the obvious need to mainly reach back for crowd pleasers. That night I was pleasantly surprised to see Springsteen and the E Street Band chose to play three songs from the new album—the title track, “10th Avenue Freeze Out,” and “Born to Run.”
I know, “10th Avenue” and “Born to Run” are not from 2009’s album but rather from 24 years ago and the monumental Thunder Road album. However, Working has many, many echoes of Thunder Road’s epic sweeps, grooving R&B hints, and a rock ‘n’ roll grounded in something much, much bigger than itself.
The short portion of “Working on a Dream” featured in the middle of the Raymond James Stadium included a Gospel choir. The studio version has a rolling along, Country Western rock flair, but the choir raised it to the anthem level—which Thunder Road features so well. Each song rising up from the grimy streets to call us up to something higher.
While new album taps into Thunder Road-era feel when the songs are piano-led character tales (“Queen of the Supermarket”), where Springsteen has been in the last 24 years also shapes the album. Songs like “Outlaw Pete” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” are visits from The Ghost of Tom Joad—folky, dusty nods to his blues/traditional roots.
With dark edges around these songs which lighten upon the horizon, Springsteen’s lyrics are at once familiar Springsteen territory (love against the world’s pain) and also deeply their own explorations of age, time, and perhaps things beyond these days. “Kingdom of Days” sets up a love relationship as “our kingdom of days,” a phrase that recalls biblical phrases like “kingdom of God” and “end of days” referring to the second coming of Christ and His eternal reign. For Springsteen, this is either a reference to heaven on Earth/faith in the world beyond what we see dimly now or it is a reference to this world/a perfect love being as much eternal life as we’ll have.
“What Love Can Do” champions the power of love over against the world’s troubles, death, blood for blood, and the mark of Cain. An unnamed, undefined love, yet a love that claims to be able to be a light that can shine through our “mark of Cain” (sinfulness), this song really points to what the love of God can do. Springsteen is working like the Romantic poets, employing biblical concepts in the service of grand ideals about love, but also leaving open the possibility that these ideals are only fulfilled in Jesus. Whether Springsteen is consciously doing this or no, he’s playing with these things as he sings.
Even the bonus track, “The Wrestler,” written for the movie starring Mickey Rourke, carries an eternal weight, a Messianic image for the broken down wrestler still trying to entertain and lift up the spirits of others. Jesus was nothing that anyone expected and appears far too weak to be Savior of the world. He will “come and stand at every door,” inviting all to follow Him. He “can make you smile when the blood hits the floor, because as much as it pains you to say it, that blood makes you free. He shows us to trust in “the broken bones and bruises I display,” our hope for life in the body nailed to the cross. He’s risen up from all of this, all for us, and He asks us now, “Tell me, friend, can you ask for anything more?”
Bruce Springsteen
Columbia Records
