Aug 262002
Springsteen is bad. The Cult of Springsteen is worse. You can always pick out those home-grown grassroots up-from-the-bottom types: they’re the ones who show up on the covers of Time and Newsweek before they ever have a hit. Bonus authenticity points for continuing to write from the point of view of the put-upon 25 years after becoming rich and famous.
Indeed. Why don’t we ever hear some ideas about being RICH, and, heaven forfend, its benefits(!), from folks like the Boss twenty years after wealth saturated their lives? A little honest introspection would be a refreshing departure from the canned condescension they calculatingly contrive to generate the "authenticity" they deem necessary to generate record sales from the masses even after capitalism has been so beddy-beddy good to them.