The 1964 song Bruce Springsteen couldn’t improve upon: “It goes to the floor”
Everything that Bruce Springsteen ever made was in service to the musical gods that he worshipped back in his prime.
He didn’t want to ever make music that didn’t have the same connective tissue back to the likes of Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, and he was going to do whatever he could to excite his fans the same way that he was excited by bands like The Rolling Stones in the 1960s. But he had a lot more genres in his arsenal than playing the same old open chords that everyone was used to whenever they heard ‘Born to Run’.
Then again, ‘The Boss’ knew better than to go too far outside his comfort zone. There are probably at least a dozen people who will be fawning over the idea of a Bruce Springsteen polka album, but he was never going to go in that direction. He had a lot of facets to his career, but a lot of them had to do with the passion that he heard in American music whenever he turned on the radio.
Bob Dylan had already opened doors in his mind that he thought were forever going to be shut, but aside from the likes of The Beatles and The Animals, the R&B world left an indelible mark on what Springsteen was trying to do. He felt that Sam and Dave belonged in the same legendary category that Little Richard did, and a lot of the greatest moments of his career came when he was channelling that same kind of passion when talking about the everyday people that he saw every day.
So when the opportunity came for him to record an album of soul music, he finally felt like he was ready to take on those tunes later in life. He wasn’t going to get away with making the same kind of leaps that Sam Cooke did when he was still a kid, but as the years went on, having a lot more depth to his voice is what made those tunes take on a new life whenever he got his voice around them.
But Springsteen wasn’t going for the obvious choices every single time he made a record. He could have easily tried to make the beginner’s guide to Motown when he walked into the studio, but the real magic could always be found in the B-sides of those songs. And besides, who the hell was going to try and take a stab at a song like ‘My Girl’ and try to play it as well as the Temptations did back in the day?
Springsteen could certainly admire the craftsmanship, but there was a good reason why his version of the Temptations hit never made it on the final version of his soul project, saying, “I thought about doing [it]. I actually recorded ’My Girl.’ My attitude is, ‘The reason everyone knows this song is because it’s a great, great song. If I can strip away the part that people have gotten used to and just make a great record out of it again, people will hear that song in a fresh way.’ When that works, we put it on the record. When that doesn’t work, it goes to the floor.”
And really, why would anyone think that they could compete with the kind of emotion in David Ruffin’s voice. There are a lot of singers who could have tried their hand at making their own version of this tune, but when even someone as great as Stevie Wonder couldn’t make the magic happen, it’s probably for the best for everyone to stop trying to recreate that same kind of record again.
Some tunes are meant to be recorded by only one band, and while plenty of artists have made their own takes on Temptations tunes, there’s a reason why ‘My Girl’ is undefeated. Others can certainly try to have the same arrangement and hit all of the notes right, but no one was going to be able to replace the way that the first one made the world feel.
