\nidk despite all of bruce springsteen\u2019s protestations he STILL maintains a fanbase of lame republican boomers so like. i think the problem kinda HAS to be his music and the fact that it isn\u2019t clear enough in its criticism. like it\u2019s not just that people misunderstand him or he got too popular and people ignored his lyrics\u2026that might be true for some but i don\u2019t buy it on a wider scale. just because it\u2019s \u201ccountry rock\u201d or whatever you want to call it (is the jersey shore \u201ccountry\u201d now??) doesn\u2019t mean people will automatically assume it to be patriotic, just look at what happened to the dixie chicks! like bruce springsteen NEVER suffered a backlash like that.
So maybe his music isnt as radical as people seem to think? his fanbase certainly doesn\u2019t think so, and in fact I think many see his political criticisms through the bias of their own conservative boomer values. like its too open to interpretation, and the criticism is clearly not harsh or biting enough, or most right wing people in the country would hate his guts just like they hate the Dixie Chicks
Like, \u201ca rejection of the \u2018American dream\u2019 as illusory\u201d looked like a feasible progression of \u201cmid-Atlantic industrial-metropolitan young white man from a working class, rockist background who is confronting disillusionment and empty, broken promises of the post-Golden Age\u201d when he started his career and built his brand in the late 70s and 80s but was not ultimately the path much of the similarly-positioned audience he built took