When the Sacred Shines: Thoughts on Springsteen's Wrecking Ball

by Gregg Chadwick

Wrecking Ball

(Song by Song Review of Bruce Springsteen's New Album - Wrecking Ball)

" The great athlete in the midst of the play rises up and shines- all attention is drawn to him. And everything around him- the players in the field, the coaches on the sidelines, the fans in the stadium, the announcers in the booth, everyone understands who they are and what they are to do immediately in relation to the sacred event that is occurring." - Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly in  All Things Shining

Gregg Chadwick

When the Levees Broke
48"x48" oil on linen 2010

The title track, Wrecking Ball (Listen Here), marks the halfway point on Springsteen's new album.  In this rousing song with an almost classic Springsteen sound the emotional tenor of the album begins to shift.  

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Play Wrecking Ball at Giants Stadium 

Initially written as a tribute to Giants Stadium in The Meadowlands in New Jersey and played at the outdoor arena shortly before the sports facility was razed, Wrecking Ball begins as a taunt against time:

Come on and take your best shot, let me see what you've got

The song builds, the singer counts off, "One, two, a one two three four!" 

Trumpets enter.

And the song wraps itself around the lyrics:

Yeah, we know that come tomorrow, none of this will be here 

So hold tight on your anger, you hold tight on your anger

The singer then shifts into an inclusive mode, the lyrics move from, "Hold tight to your anger, don't fall to your fear" to "And all our youth and beauty, it's been given to the dust."

The theme of the album again reveals itself - We are in this together.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Play Wrecking Ball 

On Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (February 27, 2012)

Springsteen's words tell a tale of lost dreams and poignant loss, but the music moves us to a communal expression of hope in the face of trouble and, for at least this moment, a rush of joy. 

This musical rush is akin to the shared glory that spectators feel as their team triumphs on the sporting field. The philosophers Hubert Dreyfus, from UC Berkeley, and Sean Kelly, from Harvard, speak of this Homeric feeling of wonder and gratitude in their marvelous book, All Things Shining:

'There are moments in sport - either in the playing of them or in the witnessing of them - during which something so overpowering happens that it wells up before you as a palpable presence and carries you along as on a powerful wave. At that moment there is no question of ironic distance from the event. That is the moment when the sacred shines."

Dreyfus and Kelly explain that the writer David Foster Wallace found this sense of the sacred in tennis. Wallace writes,

"On the sacred grass of Wimbledon, through the ... withering heat and then wind and rain ... you are apt to have what one of the tournaments press drivers describe as a 'bloody near-religious experience.'"

Like the fans at a Giants football game, the crowd at a Springsteen concert also gets swept up in a joyous, sacred expression of shared hopes and dreams that hard times cannot defeat. The song Wrecking Ball seems to distill that feeling through the powerful repetition of the lines:

And hard times come, and hard times go, and hard times come and hard times go 

Then the song crescendos with bravado and fearlessness:

Bring on Your Wrecking Ball

                    Come on and take your best shot, let me see what you've got

 Bring on Your Wrecking Ball  

The sacred moment is shared.

All lyrics from Wrecking Ball -  Copyright © Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)

More Song by Song Reviews of Wrecking Ball:

1. We Take Care of Our Own

2. Easy Money

3. Shackled and Drawn

4. Jack of All Trades

5. Death to My Hometown

6. This Depression

7. Wrecking Ball

8. You've Got It

9. Rocky Ground

10. Land of Hope and Dreams

11. We Are Alive

More at:

"Bruce Springsteen's widescreen vision of America on Wrecking Ball is filled with terror, tension, tenacity and above all else, triumph which may not replenish your bank account, but it will replenish your soul."

-Anthony Kuzminski, Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball, antiMusic

"What was done to my country was un-American."

Shackled and Drawn

Jack of All Trades

Death to My Hometown

From Down Under: Sean Sennett Talks With Springsteen About Wrecking Ball

All Things Shining by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly

The Working Man's Voice - The Wall Street Journal

A More Chaste Review of You've Got It by Jonathan Lack

Parsing the Samples and Quotes on Wrecking Ball

Bruce Springsteen, Théatre Marigny press conference, Paris, February 2012

You've Got It

by Gregg Chadwick

You've Got It

(Song by Song Review of Bruce Springsteen's New Album - Wrecking Ball)

"She is beautiful, and more than beautiful; she is surprising. Black abounds in her, and everything she inspires is nocturnal and deep. Her eyes are two caves dimly glittering with mystery, and her gaze illumines like lightning: an explosion in the darkness."

- Charles Baudelaire , The Desire to Paint from Le Spleen de Paris, trans. by Edward Kaplan

Gregg Chadwick
Golden Gate
30"x22" monotype on paper 2011

Springsteen's You've Got It (Listen Here) is a call to a union of a different kind. The song begins with a simple understated guitar and vocals vibe that sounds as if it could have come from a lost demo from his audition at Columbia Records for the legendary John Hammond.

No one ever found it, ain't no school ever taught it

No one ever made it, ain't no one ever bought it

Baby you've got it, baby you've got it

Come on and give it to me

Piano and a pedal steel guitar fill in the spaces behind the singer and the song begins to build into a horn swathed ode to lust and love.

Yeah, you can't read it in a book, and you can't even dream it

Honey, it ain't got a name, you just know it when you see it

Baby you've got it, yeah, baby you've got it

Come on and give it to me

Like good whiskey, the rasp in Springsteen's voice and Marc Muller’s bluesy guitar solo compel us to sip slowly and appreciate the company we are with. In this instance Springsteen's line from his song No Surrender is absolutely true: 

We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school

Like Springsteen sings, some things can't be learned from a book, but they still take a lot of practice to get right. 

All lyrics from You've Got It -  Copyright © Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)

More Song by Song Reviews of Wrecking Ball:

1. We Take Care of Our Own

2. Easy Money

3. Shackled and Drawn

4. Jack of All Trades

5. Death to My Hometown

6. This Depression

7. Wrecking Ball

8. You've Got It

9. Rocky Ground

10. Land of Hope and Dreams

11. We Are Alive

More at:

"Bruce Springsteen's widescreen vision of America on Wrecking Ball is filled with terror, tension, tenacity and above all else, triumph which may not replenish your bank account, but it will replenish your soul."

-Anthony Kuzminski, Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball, antiMusic

"What was done to my country was un-American."

Shackled and Drawn

Jack of All Trades

Death to My Hometown

From Down Under: Sean Sennett Talks With Springsteen About Wrecking Ball

All Things Shining by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly

The Working Man's Voice - The Wall Street Journal

A More Chaste Review of You've Got It by Jonathan Lack

Parsing the Samples and Quotes on Wrecking Ball

Bruce Springsteen, Théatre Marigny press conference, Paris, February 2012

Don't Miss This Upcoming Event on NPR:

NPR Music will broadcast Bruce Springsteen's keynote speech from the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas. The live webcast of that address will take place on NPR Music on March 15 at noon Central time.