Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen
The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle is a mess. It jumps from musical theme to theme sometimes jarringly, sometimes it's song structure is perfectly comprehensible, other times it's a like a fever dream. It's a tangle of different styles and genres, its lyrics are a jumble of different storytelling ideas that sometimes collide, but often wander into absurdity (there is a particularly hilarious moment in "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" when Bruce is telling a girl how much he loves her and then proceeds to talk about his ex for a whole verse). It's also a masterpiece. With that tangle and jumble of different ideas comes a ferocious and infectious energy. A passion that seeps into your bones and makes you want to, well, dance. And I don't mean the awkward teenage tumble of a dance party, but the kind of dance you do after doing something awesome, after acing a test, or kissing a girl or eating a donut. A life-affirming dance. It is a album, so enamored with the people and the society around it that it talks and rambles excessively. Sometimes it runs off into weird tangents and hits dead ends, but the love and grandeur that is has are undeniable. It is probably the only truly great "happy" album, I'm aware of. We could use more of those.