>>61595692
nebraska, born to run, and the river are all excellent

Hey Bruce, man. If you love liberal taxes so much, why don't you actually pay them instead of cheating the system with your fake tax farm in J00ysey.

Tom Petty is twice the artist Bruce is but gets half the appreciation. The two are contemporaries who started their careers at about the same time, but Petty was still making good songs into the 2000s while Springsteen had tapped himself out creatively by the late 80s.

>>61596625
Also Petty's stuff has aged a lot better.

I guess Tom Petty should have been a bigger liberal political shill and he'd get on more Rolling Stone Mag covers.

Now really, do you also think U2 would have gotten half as big as they did if Bono didn't open every show with a monologue about starving African people?

>>61596888
I'm pretty sure that TJT was the album that made U2 superstars and there's really not anything political on there.

>>61596906
If you want to nitpick, most of Springsteen's big hits aren't political songs anyway, they're Chuck Berry rockers about cars, girls, and teen angst. I agree that him and U2 used their superstar status as a platform for politics, but it wasn't what made them big.

Vehemently disagree. Tom Petty is the king of sing-songy stoner nursery rhymes and was partly responsible for the horrible cancer that was the Travelling Wilburys. I say keep his American Girl and Bruce's Thunder Road, then shoot all the rest of their master tapes into the sun.

>>61596955
I vehemently disagree with your disagreement. Petty has a ton of great songs. And Thunder Road isn't the Springsteen song I would save. Probably Atlantic City is the only one worth saving.

The best way to judge an artist's relevance is by how many subsequent generations of artists cited them as an influence. For example, Springsteen's primary influences were Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, and Roy Orbison. Yet I can't name an artist of any note who says that Springsteen was an influence on them.

Also like someone else said, Bruce hasn't done squat as a recording artist since Tunnel of Love. His liberal soapboxing is practically necessary to keep him in the public eye.

>>61595927
???? explain?

>>61597052
>Yet I can't name an artist of any note who says that Springsteen was an influence on them

Johnny Cougar and Steve Earle.

>>61597058
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/25/bruce-springsteen-jon-bon-jovi-tax-bills-after-new-jersey-law-change

http://www.northjersey.com/news/north-jersey-farmers-face-tightened-rules-for-tax-breaks-1.1290764?page=all

http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6509638/bruce-springsteen-organic-farm-tax-new-jersey-bon-jovi

>>61597067
And Arcade Fire and a whole slew of indie bands that were all influenced by BS. The Killers even wrote an intentional Springsteen imitation record.

>>61597052
>For example, Springsteen's primary influences were Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, and Roy Orbison

Don't forget Arlo Guthrie; Bruce often said he wanted to be the rock version of him. Too bad AG was a douchebag, so Springsteen being a douche was kind of inevitable.

When Tom Petty plays a four hour show, you'll be left disappointed that it ended before he had a chance to go through his hits. When Bruce Springsteen plays a two hour show, you'll be wanting your money back after he burns through a setlist of shitty covers and BITUSA.

The local classic rock station loves playing Free Falling, a song I can't stand.

Come to think of it, I hate John Mellencamp as well.

I could write a couple walls of text explaining my dislike for Bruce, possibly one of the most overrated artists alive today. But it's 2:30 AM and I need sleep.

Funny how the Boss pretended his whole career to be the voice of the working Joe Six Pack when most of his fans are hipster liberals.

>>61597095
What album ?

Springsteen had a lot of honesty as a songwriter, so his early albums where you can hear him growing up and maturing are the best.

This ends at Born in the USA - I suppose by then he was by then a big enough star that he couldn't relate to the life of normal people anymore.

I recently rewatched The Who - Live at the Isle of Wight and lemme tell you, that concert absolutely annihilates anything the fake farmer has ever done in his career. Ditto The Who at Woodstock and the Shepperton Sound Recordings.

The Who were like a comet crashing into the Earth circa 1971. One and a half hours of them would leave your eyeballs blasted into the back of your skull. Three hours of Springchicken would put you to sleep.

>>61597201
Battle Born

>>61597217
Heck, the Rolling Stones lost it by the mid-70s when they were jetsetting rockstars who couldn't connect with the kids anymore.

Here's how you can tell The Who (applies to any great band) were the real deal - they did ridiculous stuff, stuff that shouldn't have worked at all, but it did. What else can you say about a drummer who deliberately refuses to keep time? Or a rhythm section that plays along to the guitarist instead of vice versa. Yet they did all of that.

I've always disliked most of Springsteen's music. But there are three songs that I enjoy -- The River, Philadelphia, and Pink Cadillac -- which probably just prove I have no taste in music.

Bruce hasn't done anything worthwhile since BITUSA.

>>61597415
Tunnel of Love was ok, but that was about it. I'd struggle to name one notable recording he did post-1986.

I like Elvis Costello because he's not still trying to be the same guy he was in 1980.

>>61597437
So Sting isn't pretending it's still the Ghost In The Machine days either.

>>61597452
Boston on the other hand, gives the fans what they want.

Awesomeness.

>>61597467
Boston? The band? Are you Squidding me?

>>61597481
Hey, don't be hatin'. Boston build all their own custom amps and everything. Nobody can replicate that sound of theirs.

I think the works that bookend Born in the USA (Nebraska and Tunnel of Love) are worthy albums. Also Greetings From Ashbury Park was an innovative album that sounded like nothing else out in 1973. But other than that, Springsteen is hella overrated.

This is an extreme nitpick, but it bugs me that they still call themselves The E Street Band after Clarence Clemons kicked it, as if he was a minor nobody in the group.

>>61597559
Should the Rolling Stones have changed their name after Brian Jones died or Metallica not ever play The Four Horsemen after 1986 since it was about James, Kirk, Lars, and Cliff?

>>61597570
Brian Jones just started the band, after that he was a little crybaby bitch who did nothing and got chucked out for good reason.

ITT: People who know nothing about Bruce Springsteen

Aside from his feelsy songs (some of the best there are in rock), he also has plenty of good-time fun cars-and-girls rockers. It's fine if you don't like his politics, but that doesn't take away from his talent. For over 30 years he has been doing it better than anyone else. Have any of you listened to The Rising? That album captures the horror and anguish of 9/11 and the slow recovery from it. As for the length of his shows I can't remember Bruce and the band ever doing a 2 hour show. He gives his all when performing. How many other performers do you know can still give regular 4-hour concerts and be rocking tight jeans in their 60s?

Besides, all the hype about him being the next Dylan was advertising glop put out by the record label. Bruce himself never made those claims.

>>61597640
I forgot about The Rising. Yeah, that one's pretty good. And I've listened to all his 1973-86 albums and know them like the back of my hand.

I would say his first two records Greetings from Ashbury Park and The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, and Nebraska were the three best. Those are great records. Tunnel of Love and Darkness at the Edge of Town were not bad. Born in the USA and The River were listenable. And I am sorry but Born to Run sucks. That whole record sucks. But that is it. Forty years of work and 3-4 really good records. That's called being overrated.

Also his skills as a lyricist are vastly overrated. Everyone's a broken-down failure and a bum in his songs. I hate how he portrays working class people. The moment you lose a job, your life is totally over. And that doesn't even get into his songs like The River about losers who peak in high school. That really rustles my jimmies.

>>61597673
I've seen BS live. He puts on a good show and some of his records are good, a few even great but yeah I agree that he's very, very overrated.

Also The Rising is trash.

I like Springsteen enough but don't consider myself a big fan. Still, I respect him as a musician and a songwriter and think he brings a rawness most artists don't - certainly it's a disservice to compare him to Tom Petty (a decent songwriter in his own right, but the complete opposite of Springsteen aesthetically). Springsteen's populist stridency can get overbearing, but Billy Bragg's one of my favorites too, and I can distinguish his talent as a songwriter from his sloganeering.

>>61597718
It does a disservice to Petty to compare him to Springsteen. Petty is a much better songwriter. Springsteen never wrote a song that was catchy or had a decent pop sensibility. Born to Run has the worst guitar hook ever put to vinyl.

>>61597718
They are different songwriters with different styles and aesthetics, so stop comparing one to the other. I'm a power pop fan and find Tom Petty extremely boring although I respect his grasp of writing consistently catchy melodies.

Bruce was great at one time. If you saw live footage of him in 1975, he was a god of rock. But somehow, you just can't sing Born To Run when you're in your 60s. At least when 70 year old Mick Jagger sings about being frustrated that he can't get any nookie, he can still make it work. :^)

I used to love the guy but he hasn't made any good songs in forever and there would be no reason to still see him outside of nostalgia and fuck, I'm not paying $100 a ticket for that.

Nostalgia is a funny thing, though. It takes you back to a time when you were something you are not now. I wince when I think of all the teenage girls who'll listen to Justin Bieber tunes when they're 40.

Bruce joins the pro-war entertainment/celebrity crowd with his support for Obama 2012. He's slightly bummed out about Obama's fascist corporatism, but ignores Obama's deadly warmongering interventionism as if it didn't exist.

That's enough to make "The Boss" completely irrelevant even more than the banality of his music (and I'm not denying that he works hard at his concerts).

>>61595692
meme

>>61596625
THIS

>>61597452

Sting is great in the way that he's always made music for people his age, although it has given him a bad rap as someone who "went soft" among the younger generations

>>61597452
>>61598281
Sting totally quit pop music altogether though; he's been dabbling in Broadway tunes because he said "Nobody wants to see a guy in his 60s dance around on MTV in tight pants. I need new ways to express myself."

Still a kickass live performer, but worthless as a studio artist since the Reagan years.

>>61595774
Don't forget thunder road

Scaruffi