Lucy Dacus names her favourite Bruce Springsteen song
Over the course of a six-decade career, Bruce Springsteen has made a mammoth impact on music. Telling stories of working-class Americans over radio-friendly but meaningful heartland rock instrumentals, he became one of the biggest names in the business. The singer-songwriter has more than earned his nickname, and he really is The Boss.
A mainstay in the music industry since the mid-1960s, Springsteen’s influence has been felt in every generation of musicians since, and Lucy Dacus is no exception. The indie folk soloist and Boygenius collaborator once named Springsteen’s ‘Atlantic City’ as one of her favourite songs during an interview with The Line of Best Fit.
Like most parents of kids born in the 1990s, Dacus’ parents were huge Springsteen fans. Though she was surrounded by his music growing up, she was a true teen who rebelled against her parents’ interests, insisting that Springsteen was uncool: “I listened to Bruce Springsteen throughout my youth – because of my Dad being a huge fan – and I really didn’t like it.”
Through middle school, Dacus recalls, she was forced to listen to Springsteen all the time, which bred annoyance rather than admiration. “I thought my Dad was lame, because I was a middle-schooler and parents are lame,” she exclaimed. It was only when she heard Springsteen’s 1982 folk-rock track ‘Atlantic City’ that she began to appreciate his music.
“‘Atlantic City’ was the first song I heard where I realised that Bruce was actually very good,” she recalled, “It’s so poetic and narrative and stripped down, and in a really humble way.” The song focuses on a couple who move to Atlantic City and their resulting brushes with crime and death. “Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact,” Springsteen sings amidst harmonica solos, “But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.”
Dacus was particularly taken by how different the song was from his more commercial songwriting: “For him to do this song – after having major radio hits that were really lush and typically catchy – to then have this song that grabbed you in the gut, in the heart? It felt really bold. Taking a step back is bold when you have that type of profile. It’s dark and it’s honest, it’s like negative and hopeful can co-exist.”
It’s no surprise that Dacus admired the song’s ability to grab you in the gut and the heart – her own discography has a tendency to do just that. From the dense ‘Body to Flame’ to the devastating ‘Please Stay’, her modern indie folk contains few similarities to Springsteen’s characteristic heartland rock, but sonic storytelling and poeticism remain the focus.
Dacus even once paid tribute to The Boss and to her father, with her own take on Springsteen’s ‘Dancing in the Dark’.
Revisit the cover below.
