Dec 4, 2019
I have a new thing I want to do every week: I'm going to do a song explication of a song that I absolutely love. I'm going to go through the song from beginning to end and talk about the arrangement, the personnel on the track, and all of the details that I think make the song special.
The first few of these will be free and available to the public, but in the future it'll be a feature only available to my $10 per month subscribers on the Patreon page! I don't want to put any of the features of the mental health stuff behind a paywall because I want that to be free and available to everyone, but I think this is something fun and a way for folks to show their support for the podcast.
This week's song is "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen. In 1974, Bruce was enjoying moderate success on the heels of releasing his first two albums, 'Greetings from Asbury Park' and 'The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle.' He went into the studio with a band that would eventually evolve into the E Street Band, and cut two songs that summer, "Born to Run" and "Jungleland." "Born to Run" would go on to catapult Springsteen into the rock mainstream and land him on the covers of both Time and Newsweek magazines in the same week.
On this episode, I talk about who played on the track, the power of Springsteen's lyrics on "Born to Run," and some musical arrangement innovations that made the track so special. (All from the perspective of a drummer who can't play guitar!)
Enjoy!