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Quite a bit of my music taste comes from my parents, mostly my dad, since I grew up using his old iPod to play music. Over time I drifted away from the old U2 and Pet Shop Boys of my mom and the Blink 182 and Duran Duran of my dad, opting for the modern Fall Out Boy and Bastille. But nostalgia is a cunning creature, and I found this past year to be full of old artists, namely Bruce Springsteen.
My connection to Bruce Springsteen is directly derived from my dad. He's one of those artists that you kinda always associate with your dad until you start listening to them on your own. Ever since this summer, I've been listening to Bruce Springsteen practically nonstop, which is frankly an insane amount of Bruce Springsteen, my Spotify Wrapped is going to be a little bonkers.
I started the summer listening to my dad's favorite album, Born in the USA, which, if you talked to me at all this entire summer, you would know it was practically the only thing running through my headphones. I do have a soft spot for the album, but that would soon change once I started Darkness on the Edge of Town. I am at a loss for words when it comes to this album, except that it perfectly encapsulated a lot of my feelings about moving away for college in a strange way. My two favorite songs, "Adam Raised a Cain" and "The Promised Land" both hold a sense of discontent that really echoed in my last weeks in my hometown. Where "Adam Raised a Cain" is gritted teeth and spit curses, "The Promised Land" is an old pain and deep loathing.
While my affinity for the album is almost unexplainable in many senses, maybe it is because it reminds me of the idea of home. I wrote this on the train to Michigan, which isn't my birthplace, that is a lifetime away in Arizona. My hometown of Ann Arbor is a fascinating place, a paradox in my life. I guess that is what drew me to Springsteen's work, the desire for a home against the knowledge that you are born to run away.
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