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10 Thoughts on Bruce Springsteen’s “Only the Strong Survive”

Here are 10 thoughts about Bruce Springsteen’s “Only the Strong Survive,” an album of covers of classic Soul and R&B songs.

Bruce Springsteen released a covers album of classic Soul and R&B songs called Only the Strong Survive (2022). Springsteen has often covered songs live and he has done another album of covers (We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions). Yet, many fans are disappointed that the songwriter is not releasing an album of new material. There are plenty of sources providing in-depth reviews, so instead Chimesfreedom gives you ten quick takes.

1. Short Overall Review: If you like Springsteen, Only the Strong Survive features the artist singing great songs. So if you get past being disappointed by the lack of new original songs, you should just sit back and enjoy this lovely album.

2. Do album reviews matter anymore? Most folks pay for a streaming service and can listen to anything they want without commitment. So if you like Springsteen or are curious, you can listen to the album and make up your own mind. I am old school and resisting streaming so I did buy it as I have done for every Springsteen album; and I’m happy I did.

3. Springsteen’s Voice: As others have noted, Springsteen’s voice has aged like a fine wine, and he is able to pull off these classic songs quite well. For example, on “I Wish It Would Rain,” one of the greatest pop records of all time, nobody can hold a candle to the Temptations’ David Ruffin. Springsteen does not surpass Ruffin or any of the originals, but he does a darn good job.

4. Well, then why do we need this album if we have the better originals? First, Springsteen has earned the right to do whatever he wants, and great songwriters can do tributes to music they love (as Merle Haggard did with albums honoring Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills). Second, if you are a fan, it is fun to hear him sing these classics. And third, while compilation albums can be good and you could make a playlist of the original versions of these songs, one artist doing a covers album offers a consistency to your listening that jumping between artists does not.

5. Good Song, Strange Video: Springsteen’s weird hand movements in the video for the Commodores’ “Nightshift” are distracting and may make it one of his worst videos ever. His facial expressions are distracting too.

6. Sounds Like a Springsteen Classic: By contrast, his recording of and video for “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)” sounds like a classic Springsteen song from the first moment when the Boss yells “C’mon.” The video is fantastic and fun too.

6. The Music: The musicians, including the E Street Horns, and backing singers (Soozie Tyrell, Lisa Lowell, Michelle Moore, Curtis King Jr., Dennis Collins, and Fonzi Thornton) on this album are absolutely fantastic.

7. A Southside Johnny Album? Not surprisingly, Springsteen singing R&B covers at times makes you think you are listening to an album by that other guy from Jersey, Southside Johnny. That is not necessarily a bad thing. At no point is the Southside Johnny connection stronger than on “Don’t Play that Song,” initially made famous by Ben E. King. Springsteen even inserts a reference to the Jersey Shore.

8. Covering Diana Ross: Maybe my favorite track on the album is the final song, with Springsteen singing “Someday We’ll Be Together,” made famous by Diana Ross & the Supremes. Along with Aretha Franklin’s “Don’t Play That Song” and Jackie Shane’s “Any Other Way,” the Supremes song features one of the selections where he is covering a song made famous by female singers. So Springsteen’s recording does add a twist to hear a male voice sing the lyrics. Or maybe it is that Springsteen finds a special connection to the song, having previously written a song with the nearly identical title, “Someday (We’ll Be Together).” Springsteen wrote that outtake from Darkness on the Edge of Town around 1977, but first released it on The Promise (2010).

9. Guest Artist: It’s cool that Sam Moore from Sam & Dave sings on two tracks with Springsteen. But why not a Sam & Dave song? Springsteen has indicated there were a lot of tracks recorded that are not on the album, so I wonder if there will be a sequel album.

10. Repeated Listens: Okay, you could have just read the first point and stopped reading. But the more I listen to the album, the more I get past focusing on differences from the originals and let go and just enjoy the songs. While this album probably won’t be at the top of my list of the greatest Springsteen albums, it will likely be in the running for one of the Springsteen albums I am most likely to play. It will be a great one to play if you have company who may not think they are Springsteen fans.

What do you think of Only the Strong Survive? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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“Satan’s Jeweled Crown” & Bruce Springsteen (Cover of the Day)

I’ll See You In My Dreams: Goodbye 2020, Hello 2021

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Local News Coverage of Bruce Springsteen in 1978

See how local news stations covered a young Bruce Springsteen after the release of “Darkness on the Edge of Town.”

Many of us are so used to Bruce Springsteen being a rock icon that it can be easy to forget a time before Springsteen and the E Street Band attained legendary status. Therefore it is interesting to look back at local news coverage of the band early in Springsteen’s career.

The following video features a couple of local television news interviews with the young Bruce Springsteen starting off his Darkness on the Edge of Town tour. The interviews feature some cool concert footage too, as “the kid from Asbury Park” talks about “the most important” night of his life. Check it out.

Backstreets Presents: The Darkness Television Interviews from Backstreets on Vimeo.

The video was put together by the people at Backstreets. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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10 Thoughts on Bruce Springsteen’s “Only the Strong Survive”

Belgians Reach Out to Bruce Springsteen With “Waiting on a Sunny Day”

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Belgians Reach Out to Bruce Springsteen With “Waiting on a Sunny Day”

Musicians from three music schools in Belgium met on a field to cover Bruce Springsteen’s “Waiting on a Sunny Day.”

More than 200 musicians from three Belgian schools came together recently to perform Bruce Springsteen’s “Waiting on a Sunny Day” in a field. The musicians came together for the joy of playing the uplifting song, and they came together to send a message to Springsteen.

The musicians hope the video of their performance will somehow make it to Springsteen and that it will inspire Springsteen to travel to Belgium for a concert. As they explain on a website about the event, “[W]e hope that Mr. Springsteen will appreciate the result and will come to do us the honor of a concert in the Belgian fields because we want to prove that you don’t have to be a big music business company to reach the greatest artists in the world.”

I suspect Springsteen would like the video. I know I do. The song is joyous in concert and it also sends an uplifting message when musicians gather to play it on an open field. I also like that the video is professional but not too professional. The musicians are not overly coordinated in their dress or the way they move as in many videos involving large groups and music. It’s a wonderful interpretation of “Waiting on a Sunny Day.”

What do you think of the Springsteen cover? Leave your two cents in the comments.

“Satan’s Jeweled Crown” & Bruce Springsteen (Cover of the Day)

In 1993, Bruce Springsteen performed moving renditions of the Louvin Brothers song “Satan’s Jeweled Crown” at several concerts before he stopped playing the song.

Although I love Bruce Springsteen’s work with The E Street Band, my heart also has a soft spot for the different directions Springsteen took in the 1990s. In addition to some amazing solo work that decade, he released two albums on the same day in 1992 with a band that was not the E Street Band. Subsequently, he toured with a new band.

As Springsteen sought rejuvenation by temporarily surrounding himself with (mostly) new backing musicians, he often tried different directions. For example, at a handful of stops on his tour with the band, Springteen chose an unusual cover, the Louvin Brothers’ song “Satan’s Jeweled Crown.”

Springseen has only performed “Satan’s Jeweled Crown” six times, all while touring in 1993. Below, Springsteen performs “Satan’s Jeweled Crown” backed by several vocalists.

The YouFube video states that the performance is from Stockholm Olympic Stadium in 1993, but the song is not on the setlist from that show and more likely from shows around the same time in England, Germany, or Ireland. Check it out.

The Louvin Brothers

“Satan’s Jeweled Crown” is a cover of The Louvin Brothers song that appeared on their 1959 album Satan is Real. Songwriter Edgar L. Eden wrote “Satan’s Jeweled Crown” as a religious song, where the singer rejects the temptations of Satan with the help of God.

There is not much about songwriter Edgar Eden on the Internet, with his name only coming up as the writer of “Satan’s Jeweled Crown.” So it is unclear if he wrote anything else. Yet, even if all he left us is “Satan’s Jeweled Crown,” it is a beautiful work. The chorus of the song recounts the casting off of the jeweled crown given by Satan:

Satan’s jeweled crown, I’ve worn it so long;
But God, for my soul, has reached down;
His love set me free, He made me His own
And helped me cast off Satan’s jeweled crown.

Springsteen’s Version

As most Springsteen fans know, the characters in the Boss’s songs have a complicated relationship with religion, and rarely are conflicts so clear. Perhaps that is why Springsteen made some small changes to the lyrics of his version of “Satan’s Jeweled Crown.”

For example, Springsteen begins with the first verse instead of the above chorus that begins the version by The Louvin Brothers. So, Springsteen instead begins with: “If I could be king and ruler of nations . . . I’d rather know that I have salvation. . . ” Whether intentionally or not, this opening takes a Springsteen fan back to “Badlands,” where Springsteen sang about people not finding happiness in being rich or being a king (“a king ain’t satisfied / ‘Til he rules everything”).

After the opening verse of “Satan’s Jeweled Crown,” Springsteen changes the words in the Louvin Brothers’ chorus to replace the reference to “God” with “you” (or “You”): “Then You, for my soul reached down / Your love set me free, You made me your own.”

One may then interpret that the singer is singing about a lover who saved them. Or the “You” could still be God or a reference for whatever religion one practices. It is a tweak to the words that does not undermine the song in many ways and perhaps makes it more inclusive at the same time.

Springsteen also tweaked the second verse, changing the description of the singer’s life from “reckless and evil” to “wasteful and sinful.” He also changes the Louvin Brothers’ “drinking and running around” to eliminate the drinking part: “Yeah, I just keep moving around.”

Springsteen may have learned the song from Emmylou Harris’s recording of the song, which she entitled with a slight alteration, “Satan’s Jewel Crown.” Her version appeared on her 1975 album Elite Hotel. Either way, he clearly was aware of her version.

Like Springsteen, Harris begins the song with the verse instead of the chorus (changing “if I were king” to “if I were queen”). The changes that Springsteen made to the Louvin Brothers’ second verse also are similar to changes earlier made by Harris to that verse. Still, he made some alterations to Harris’s version too, using “wasteful and sinful” versus Harris’s “sinful and needless” (in contrast to the Louvin Brothers’ “reckless and evil”).

There is one big difference between Harris’s version and Springsteen’s. Harris kept the reference specifically to “God” in the chorus. So Springsteen’s change to “You” likely was original to him.

Many Rivers to Cross

Springsteen and the same singers during the May 28, 1994 Stockholm concert did perform Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross.” (You also can see that Springsteen is in a different outfit for this performance, confirming that the “Satan’s Jeweled Crown” video is not from the same show.

Yet, it is another amazing and somewhat unusual Springsteen concert performance.

These covers show one side of the many sides of Bruce Springsteen. While his albums have gone in a variety of musical directions, he has never released a gospel album. Such a gospel album project was in the works as recently as 2008, but never released. These performances above, however, show what a treat it would be if Springsteen were to ever release an album devoted to gospel music.

Leave your two cents in the comments.

10 Thoughts on Bruce Springsteen’s “Only the Strong Survive”

Local News Coverage of Bruce Springsteen in 1978

Belgians Reach Out to Bruce Springsteen With “Waiting on a Sunny Day”

Mary Chapin Carpenter and Emmylou Harris Pay Tribute to Joan Baez

I’ll See You In My Dreams: Goodbye 2020, Hello 2021

Springsteen Releasing “Letter to You”

( Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

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I’ll See You In My Dreams: Goodbye 2020, Hello 2021

What better way to say goodbye to 2020 than with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performing “I’ll See You In My Dreams”?

As we say goodbye to 2020, which has been full of struggles, everyone will have their own way of ringing in the new year. We have lost so many people to the pandemic. But while collectively there has been so much loss and heartache, life moves on with births, marriages, and other events that have given joys too.

What better way to end the unusual year than with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s performance of “I’ll See You In My Dreams.” The song, from one of the best albums of the year, Letter to You, is a fitting coda to the year.

I’ll see you in my dreams,
When all the summers have come to an end;
I’ll see you in my dreams,
We’ll meet and live and love again;
I’ll see you in my dreams,
Yeah, up around the river bend,
For death is not the end,
And I’ll see you in my dreams.

Springsteen made a statement with his choice of songs for the show. The album Letter to You features many rousing songs, new and old. Yet, Springsteen did not choose the title song about his connection with fans. He did not choose other songs that can be interpreted as referencing our current national leadership. He did not choose songs from the 1970s that he finally released officially on this album. No, with the year and pandemic on his mind, he chose the two songs most about loss and remembering lost friends and family: “Ghosts” and “I’ll See You In My Dreams.”

Saturday Night Live performances are somewhat notorious for not having the best sound. But the rough-around-the edges performance of the E Street Band, which has not been able to perform live this year, makes this version of “I’ll See You In My Dreams” even more endearing.

Bruce’s ragged vocal chords, the lyrics of loss, and the absence of two band members who chose not to travel due to Covid concerns, help make it the perfect performance for ending 2020.