The one song Julien Baker could listen to for the rest of her life
The emotion laced throughout every Julien Baker song is enough to leave any hardened man in stitches. Although her brand of indie folk might not be to everyone’s taste, Baker’s knack for songwriting has given her the ability to take a song, play around with the characters, and create a melody that rips your heart out of your chest by the time the final chorus rolls around. Then again, Baker has always been grateful for the songwriters she loved growing up.
When speaking to Line of Best Fit, Baker recalled the major idols that drove her to write songs after picking up the guitar. While Baker embraced the songwriting of artists like Paramore and mewithoutyou in her teens, one of her all-time favourite songs dates back to the days of classic rock.
Of all the great tracks that she has connected with, Baker singled out ‘Jungleland’ by Bruce Springsteen as a song she will never get tired of, recalling, “If I were on an island and I could only listen to one song for the rest of my life it would be ‘Jungleland.’ It’s got everything you need, a fast part, a slow part, a piano solo in a different key with a Clarence Clemons sax solo over it and it’s eight minutes long”.
Coming off Springsteen’s cinematic masterpiece Born to Run, ‘Jungleland’ is the pivotal climax of the record. After going through various scenes from the middle of Nowhere, New Jersey, Springsteen lets his characters make an honest stand against their troubled home lives, only to end up wounded in the streets and limping home.
It’s that sentiment that always struck a nerve with Baker, saying, “The lyric that makes me die is ‘they try to make an honest stand, but they wind up wounded, not even dead.’ The little positives in there, ‘wounded, not even dead’, just ‘wounded’, are beautiful”.
Instead of seeing him for the energised rock and roller that puts on four-hour shows, Baker was always more concerned with Springsteen’s approach to poetry, creating crystal-clear images in the listener’s mind with a few words. Even though that flowery language is usually reserved for artists like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, Baker appreciated how he could make the most pedestrian experiences sound romantic.
As she explains: “It’s like when he sings about going down to the reservoir, everybody knows their reservoir, their lookout point or the corner store they hang out at. He legitimises the mundane and says, ‘I’m going to assign beauty and literary description to this truck stop and to this scene,’ and it’s riveting”.
Even with staple tracks of her own under her belt, Baker has made it a habit to infuse the Springsteen mentality into her tunes. Although most of the characters on albums like Little Oblivions couldn’t be described as important by rock standards, it’s the subtle idiosyncrasies of the songs that make them feel special. While most rock stars like to paint their stories as large as possible, Baker and Springsteen prefer to see their tunes as documents of what happens every day.
