Bruce Springsteen

The often-overlooked follow-up to Born in the USA finds Springsteen -- struggling in a marriage of two years -- leaving his hot-rod parked outside and instead telling stories from inside the marital home. "Spare Parts" chills the soul; "Valentine's Day" is a mystical gem. Haunting stuff.

So Bruce Springsteen met a girl, fell in love, got married and made an album of songs about
meeting a girl, falling in love and getting married. And if you think it's that cut and dried,
you don't know Springsteen. Far from being a series of hymns to cozy domesticity, Tunnel
of Love is an unsettled and unsettling collection of hard looks at the perils of commitment.
A decade or so ago, Springsteen acquired a reputation for romanticizing his subj... More >

Where Nebraska was plunged in a social despair he never quite made his own, this companion piece comes out of personal compulsion. By depicting the fear of commitment as sheer terror, he does the impossible: renews L-O-V-E as pop subject. First side's got distance, bravado, optimism, even a joke, but then comes one long deep look inside, so well-observed that he seems neither self-pitying nor self-important, just a decent guy with a realistic understanding of his major but not insoluble emotional problems. And although the format is almost as spare as Nebraska's, the man has worked on his sense of rhythm the way he's worked on his marriage, which means he's pleasing to hear with just a drummer or alone. Next thing you know he'll learn to dance. (Grade - A)