The Bruce Springsteen song Julien Baker couldn’t live without
Julien Baker is undoubtedly one of the brightest rising stars of this generation. Her solo albums, especially her 2015 debut, Sprained Ankle, established her as a sharp songwriter. But recently, her role as part of the supergroup Boygenius alongside Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers has shot her to global success.
In the band, Julien Baker seems to bring the rockier sounds, leading on tracks like ‘$20’, ‘Anti-Curse’ and ‘Satanist’. Her solo efforts weave a line between gentle folk sounds, indie instrumentals and a clear love for classic rock. Finding her introduction to music through the church, Baker’s connection to her local Christian hardcore scene in her teens undeniably informs her sound now.
But when it comes to Baker’s favourite songs and artists, she loves an eclectic mix. In a conversation with The Line Of Best Fit, she shared nine of her favourite songs from artists like Paramore, Sia, Death Cab For Cutie and Manchester Orchestra. Demonstrating her varied tastes and the effect early indie especially had on her music, Baker especially loves songs “where you can take the listener on a journey”.
It’s that draw towards narrative songwriting and lyrical epics that led her to The Boss. Once you know about Julien Baker’s love for Bruce Springsteen, you can undeniably hear it in her work. One song in particular stands out to Baker as not only a favourite track but a vital piece of the puzzle when it came to her picking up a pen and writing for herself.
“I think the thing people maybe miss about Bruce Springsteen is his poetry,” Baker says. “People I talk to about him say ‘Yeah, Bruce, Rock and Roll!’ and I’m ‘yeah, it’s Rock and Roll, he plays four-hour concerts, he’s an impeccable musician, he absolutely shreds on that Telecaster, and he’s a gritty, true rock star, but his poetry is wild.”
It was the literary element of Springsteen’s work that first landed him in Baker’s field of influence, all thanks to an old English teacher; “One of my teachers at school asked if we thought lyrics could be poetry and somebody said ‘No.’ The teacher said, ‘Really? You don’t think that lyrics and poetry are the same thing?’ She launched into a poem, and we were all, ‘What is this?’ When she finished, she said ‘that was the song ‘Jungleland’ by Bruce Springsteen.”
A ten-minute-long epic from his 1975 album Born To Run, ‘Jungleland’ is one of Springsteen’s most adventurous lyrical narratives. Derailing from a piano ballad into a classic Springsteen take on rock ’n’ roll, no wonder Baker found so much inspiration in this track. “It’s got everything you need,” Baker explains, “a fast part, a slow part, a piano solo in a different key with a Clarence Clemons sax solo over it.”
Relating it back to her own life, growing up in suburban southern US, Baker picks out “They’ll meet beneath that giant Exxon sign that brings this fair city light” as a favourite lyric. “Me and my friends used to hang out at corner stores, and you’re imagining the glow of this neon, brilliant light, bathed in blue and red, it’s juxtaposed with the sad, white-trashiness of it being an Exxon gas station,” she says, adding “he’s made a white trash hangout poetic.”
Baker’s love for Springsteen feels clear in every one of her own songs as she litters her work with poetic takes on day-to-day situations, scenes and feelings. “I love Bruce Springsteen so much, but I love ‘Jungleland’ more than any of his other songs, it’s so epic in its nature.” In fact, Baker loves the song so much that she defines it as the one song she couldn’t live without – “If I were on an island and I could only listen to one song for the rest of my life, it would be ‘Jungleland.’
