Glory Days

Whether we like to admit it or not, we all are influenced by "bandwagon" thinking. When I look at the absolutely dreadful music that is currently popular, I'd like to THINK that I'd be a discerning listener and reject most the crud. But I know that's not the case. If I were a teenager today, I'd be a big fan of Lady Gaga, Kesha, and Taylor Swift.

But I didn't grow up today. I am a child of the 1980's. and there are four artists in my mind that hover above the 1980's like four pillars of a Roman temple: Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson, and Bruce Springsteen. And of the four, Bruce Springsteen was definitely my favorite.

Which strikes me as funny now. On the way home from Lexington last Thursday, for the first time in a long time, I listened to Born in the U.S.A., which was the album (sorry, when it comes to pre-1990's music, I still consider them "albums," not "CD's" or even "records") that really launched Springsteen's popularity into the stratosphere. When I was a junior and senior in high school, I listened to that album over and over and over and over. I probably played it AT LEAST once a month. It's one of the few albums that I played so much that I wore out the LP. I then purchased ANOTHER copy of the LP, and when records went the way of the 8 track, I re-purchased it on CD. I absolutely LOVED that record.

But here's why I say that liking the record so much when I was in high school was "funny": because the record ISN'T about an adolescent mindset. Bruce Springsteen was 35 years old when the album was released, and the songs reflect that maturity. The second side of the album (yes, I still think of these albums as having "sides," too) especially isn't about adolescent good times. Instead, song after song on the second side of Born in the U.S.A. is about someone looking BACK on good times and realizing how transient they were. "No Surrender," "Bobbie Jean," "Glory Days," and "My Hometown" were ALL songs about people looking at the idealism of youth and comparing that to the reality of the present and understanding that something had been lost along the way. Sure, the songs sometimes masqueraded as upbeat rockers (see the video below), but the message at the heart of all of these songs was one of sadness.

I was listening to these songs at the time of my life when I should have been LIVING the idealism that the characters in the songs were looking back on so fondly. But the effect of listening to these songs over and over again was that I understood--maybe in a way that I shouldn't have--that these days were all "glory days" that would eventually "pass me by." I remember sitting at a party after my prom my senior year and watching everyone else there celebrating and having a good time and thinking to myself, "This is the end. This is the end of this life as I know it, and in a few weeks I'll stand in a graduation gown with these people and throw my mortarboard in the air, and then I'll never see most them again." And I haven't.

So what? So nothing really. I just thought of these things while I listened to these songs. I was old enough at 17 and 18 to understand them. Now I'm old enough to understand them AND feel them.

(I can't see the video)