Lost in the Tracks

“Born to Run” – BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

I don’t usually enjoy music that strives so obviously to be BIG; even when it comes to canonical classic rock, I prefer songs whose hugeness feels like an accidental discovery – “You Really Got Me,” for example.

But “Born to Run” works because of its grandiosity. The sonic assault captures the adolescent conviction that one not only has a destiny, but that said destiny is being unfairly withheld by less pure, more ignorant forces. Meanwhile, the lyrics have a wisdom the singer hasn’t actually earned, yet, but that the song’s listeners might have, or at least need to understand: this impulse to escape is likely doomed to failure.

I’m pretty sure that combination of teenaged will-to-power and adult pessimism is what separates Springsteen from so many artists who trod the same ground in the same motorcycle boots. Most dunderheaded rockers, gifted a riff from the gods like the one that powers this tune, would not have limned the story with so many portents of doom. Our motorcyclist, and the lady who straps her hands cross his engines, would have been heroic figures, and even if they never reached their destination, it wouldn’t have been their own damn fault.

“Together, Wendy, we can live with the sadness” is a pretty fucking adult lyric – so what the hell is it doing here, in a song about the exhilaration of running toward your dreams? It’s as if Bruce knows from the beginning that running is all they can really do. There is no destination where one can walk in the sun, only an urge to find it – an urge that doesn’t belong solely to teenagers, but which teenagers are uniquely able to succumb to.

The rest of us need artists like Bruce Springsteen, and songs like this one, to remind us of how alluring such succumbing can be.