The album Bruce Springsteen wrote to destroy his reputation: “I was Bruced out”
Most artists would kill to have the reputation that Bruce Springsteen has earned. Even though ‘The Boss’ has made a few missteps throughout his career, he still manages to feel like the everyman despite being one of the biggest stars in the world. But there’s a fine line between being the everyman and being a cartoon-ish version of the average Joe, and Springsteen felt that it was time to kill off one side of himself when working on the album Tunnel of Love.
By the time 1985 kicked in, it’s hard to imagine why Springsteen would want to mess with his formula ever again. He had spent years turning himself into the next true poet of rock and roll after Bob Dylan, and Born in the USA was the kind of mainstream record that didn’t have to compromise any of his vision.
If you think about it, ‘Born in the USA’ might be one of the most pointed songs that he ever wrote, managing to cram into messages taking his country down a few pegs and yet still sound like a July 4th barbecue staple. It was the best of both worlds, but that might have been the problem surrounding everything.
Just look at the cover of the album. Iconic, yes, but the fact that Springsteen was clad in those denim jeans and presenting himself ass-first to his audience was bound to turn him into a certain caricature of what the American dream was supposed to be. This man wasn’t perfect, though, and Tunnel of Love is probably the clearest indication of that.
After coming off one of the cleanest mixes of his career, the blown-out speakers of ‘Ain’t Got You’ let you know that you’re hearing a man who’s completely unsure of himself right out of the gate. Having gone through a messy divorce, a lot of this album involves getting acquainted with the sloppy version of Springsteen as he peels back the layers of himself that most wouldn’t even dare to touch.
While some of the lyrics behind the record could come off as more than a little bit embarrassing, The Boss knew that it had to be as unfiltered as possible, telling Rolling Stone, “I really enjoyed the success of Born in the USA, but by the end of the whole thing, I just kind of felt Bruced out. It’s funny what you create, but in the end, the only thing you can do is destroy it. So when I wrote ‘Tunnel of Love’, I thought I had to reintroduce myself as a songwriter, in a very non-iconic role.”
The raw production may have shaken off Springsteen’s work’s pop appeal, but that didn’t mean fans stopped paying attention. In fact, Tunnel of Love may have done for him what Blood on the Tracks did for Dylan, making both of them look a lot more human in the face of their iconic status.
And since Springsteen took a back seat to fame for a while, it meant more people were happy to see him again when he came back into the limelight, not becoming a real heavy-hitter in the public eye until The Rising came out. It’s every artist’s dream to get that white-hot spotlight once, but after Tunnel of Love, Springsteen was only going to become an icon whenever he thought the time was right.
