Bruce Springsteen wants to change the topic with ‘Only the Strong Survive’

When Bruce Springsteen went on Howard Stern’s Sirius/XM radio show recently to promote his new album of soul music covers, “Only the Strong Survive,” he talked about his often-voiced idea of his career being “a lifelong conversation with my audience.”

“Thankfully, I’ve got a sizable audience that’s interested in what’s interesting to me,” Springsteen said. “Marty Scorsese, I think it was, once said the job of the artist is to make the audience care about your obsessions.”

Springsteen’s current obsession, it seems, is paying homage to the soul music of his youth, striving to do justice to songs that have long been near and dear to him.

That includes familiar classics, like the Supremes’ “Someday We’ll Be Together” and the Temptations’ “I Wish It Would Rain” along with smart and sometimes obscure selections like Frank Wilson’s joyous “Do I Love You (Indeed I Do),” and “Any Other Way,” the William Bell-penned signature song of Toronto transgender music pioneer Jackie Shane.

“Only the Strong Survive,” which comes out Nov. 11, has two pillars of Philly Soul built into its foundation.

It takes its title from a 1969 hit Jerry Butler, known as The Iceman, wrote with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. It’s a composition, I was fascinated to recently learn, inspired by a conversation among the three about Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If.”

And the album also contains a Springsteen take on Butler’s 1968 hit “Hey, Western Union Man,” a lovelorn earworm about an archaic form of communication, also written by the trio. The song, like “Only the Strong Survive,” was released on Mercury Records before Gamble and Huff formed their own Philadelphia International label in 1971.

The aim of “Only the Strong Survive,” Springsteen says in an introductory video for the album, was “to do something that I’ve never done before: make some music that is centred around singing, around challenging my voice.”

In his 2016 memoir, “Born to Run,” Springsteen dissed himself as a vocalist, talking about his early ambitions to be a rock star: “My voice was never going to win any prizes,” he wrote. “The songs would have to be the fireworks.”

The idea behind “Only the Strong Survive,” which Springsteen, producer Ron Aniello, and engineer Rob Labret began work on during pandemic lockdown and is not an E Street Band record, is to demonstrate how the Boss’ self-confidence as a singer has justifiably grown over the course of his career.

The album does add plenty to the Springsteen conversation. Along with 2006′s folkie “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions,” it’s the second album in his career made up of other people’s songs. It offers a curated vision, rather than a self-created one.

It shines a light on nostalgic Springsteen favourites like Tyrone Davis’ “If I Could Turn Back the Hands of Time” and Dobie Gray’s “Soul Days.” With soaring strings and arrangements largely lovingly loyal to the original, it’s a tribute to classic soul songcraft.

And along with the 40 outtakes that Springsteen has said didn’t make the final cut, it will provide plenty to spice up set lists next year on Springsteen and the E Streeters’ long-awaited tour.

But of course, “Only the Strong Survive” has another agenda when it comes to the conversation between Springsteen and his fans.

It means to change the subject.

This summer, when tickets for the 2023 Springsteen-E Street Band tour went on sale, Springsteen fans who have been loyal to the Boss for decades found themselves plunged into a crisis of faith.

Thanks to Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” sales methodology, some tickets for Springsteen’s shows went on sale for face value prices over $4,000. With even nondynamically priced tickets far from, or behind the stage going for over $200, the idea of the Boss as a hardworking song poet of the common man who — though absurdly wealthy himself — could speak credibly to working-class concerns took a self-inflicted hit.

After decades of loyalty to an artist whose marathon shows have served as life-affirming, communal celebrations of rock and roll redemption — “purification rituals,” as Springsteen called them on Stern — his trademark end-of-show vow that “Nobody wins unless everybody wins” rings hollow in retrospect.

I don’t know a single hard-core Springsteen fan — and with a personal history going back to a couple of South Philly Spectrum shows in 1980, I count myself among them — who didn’t find their Boss belief shaken.

When even Backstreets, the excellent, previously always-admiring outlet that bills itself as The Boss Website, joins in on the criticism, you know you’re in hot water. And then there was Springsteen’s longtime manager Jon Landau’s very tone-deaf dismissal of the outrage in a story in New York Times.

Personally, I haven’t considered “breaking up” with Springsteen as a fan. Price gouging can’t make bad songs out of “Thunder Road” or “Tougher Than the Rest” or “The Rising,” all of which Springsteen did moving solo versions of, on the Stern show.

But I was stunned by the bad business acumen and image management. Landau and Springsteen have skilfully maintained a cares-about-the-little-guy artist brand since the 1970s. One on-sale concert tour has transformed Springsteen’s image from a guy who tries to make it affordable for his fans to somebody who’s out to make a killing.

All that is context for the release of “Only the Strong Survive.” The Stern interview, which contains many sterling performances and lots of insightful Boss talk, also is part of the conversation shifter. (Though it included no mention of the ticket pricing brouhaha. Springsteen has yet to address it directly.)

Springsteen released a rock solid E Street Band record, “Letter to You,” in 2020, that COVID has kept him from playing live, and he also put out a country-flavoured solo album “Western Stars,” since his last concert tour.

So it wasn’t like he desperately needed to release new music as fodder for the upcoming tour. But what he did need was to offer up some heartfelt art that put his current obsessions on display, in hopes that his audience come along with him.

He needs people to start talking about his music again, rather than his ticket prices. (And he certainly didn’t hurt his relationship with his Philly fan base by showing up at the Phillies World Series game on Wednesday night.)

On those terms, “Only the Strong Survive” is a success. It’s a visit to a safe comforting place — the church of soul music — that’s reverential and enriching.

And along with likable renditions of some great songs — which Boss fans would do well to go back to the originals — it’s sequencing works in effectively presenting familiar themes in a fractious time, as we emerge from the pandemic, without getting too heavy-handed about it.

The album opens by advocating for perseverance with the Philly Soul title cut, and after hitting an emotional apex with Jimmy Ruffin’s epic “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,” closes by holding out hope via “Some Day We’ll Be Together.” “Only the Strong Survive” is a positive gesture and a balm to the soul, but it’s only a start on the road to building back trust.

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