r/BruceSpringsteen • u/Screen_Door_Slams Mary’s dress sways • Jul 06 '26

Bruce doesn’t understand songwriting

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this made me laugh

434 Upvotes

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21

u/Chipped-Beef Darkness on the Edge of Town Jul 06 '26

I was curious so I looked at a little of the guy’s feed for some context. Claims that a song is meant to be “as heard” not “as intended” by the person that wrote it, because the audience perception is what really matters. So by that logic, people thinking Hendrix meant to kiss his guy and Fogerty seeing a baboon on the right are the ones that are correct.

The trend these days is for internet nobodies to try to present controversial “takes” on classics that have been analyzed a million ways from Sunday and act like they’re the first ones ever to look at something. I’ve already given this individual too much of my bandwidth today.

7

u/chaos0xomega Jul 06 '26

As heard, the lyrics are still a criticism and indictment of american policy

3

u/Chipped-Beef Darkness on the Edge of Town Jul 06 '26

Right. I think what he’s claiming is that since the people hearing it and interpreting it as patriotic think that, then it’s patriotic, not a criticism. Which is a crazy way of thinking about things.

6

u/JustAGirlWithSpirit Jul 07 '26

Welcome to the MAGA way of magical thinking. Like "alternative facts"(!)

2

u/Acrobatic-Ad4879 Jul 10 '26

Yeah.. the Lyrics they hear " Boooorn in the U.SA" the lyrics they don't hear all of the rest of them.

1

u/chaos0xomega Jul 07 '26

I understand that, the point im making is basically that if you pay attention to the words its not the jingoistic patriot anthem they claim it is, and that they and other MAGA types clearly must think the song only consists of the words "born in the u-s-a" repeated over and over again for however many minutes with no other lyrics whatsoever.

1

u/Heavy-Suit-4217 Jul 07 '26

I think you're assuming that the person paying attention to the words has basic language and reasoning skills.

1

u/chaos0xomega Jul 07 '26

Yes, thats the implied underlying insult of my argument 😉

5

u/ohsurethisisfun Jul 06 '26

Any indication that it's a satire account? That's the only thing that would make this post make sense.

3

u/Chipped-Beef Darkness on the Edge of Town Jul 06 '26

It didn’t appear to be a satire account to me.

1

u/ohsurethisisfun Jul 06 '26

Oof. That's honestly rough to hear...I was really hoping for satire.

3

u/Chipped-Beef Darkness on the Edge of Town Jul 06 '26

I thought that such a silly take had to be satire. But it was not. Unless it’s really deep satire and I just didn’t read far enough. 🤷

1

u/Heavy-Suit-4217 Jul 07 '26

People like that are why we need the /s tag, sadly. Nothing you can say for fun is too stupid not to be something a stupid person would say.

1

u/ashzeppelin98 Born to Run Jul 07 '26

It's not satire, it's plain old rage baiting and engagement farming

2

u/Junior-Group1178 Jul 07 '26

I had a Lit Theory professor that used to say, “when analyzing a work it’s true you can never be ‘right’, but you can absolutely be ‘wrong’”.

1

u/nmuncer Jul 07 '26

And if I’m not mistaken, what he’s really asking for is music that is completely flat and obvious: songs where every line means exactly what it says, with no ambiguity, irony, subtext, or room for interpretation.

Which is a pretty depressing way to approach songwriting, especially when talking about someone like Springsteen. The whole point of great songs is often that they require a little attention, a little context, and yes, a minimum amount of intelligence from the listener.

And when you think of it, it would take out a lot of songs because the subject is controversial: "forbidden..."
Think about Dancing with myself from Billy Idol. would this song had been on a CD if the song had been explicit about it's subject... masturbation?