“No Surrender” – Bruce Springsteen
(Words/music: Bruce Springsteen, available on Born in the U.S.A., Columbia 1984)
This statement would probably make Bruce Springsteen’s day: I’ve largely explored Springsteen’s catalog the same way I’ve explored Bob Dylan’s output. My most concentrated listening to both Springsteen and Dylan occurs when I want to hear a certain song, which then points me toward an entire album. For instance, cravings for “Tangled Up in Blue” lead to an hour with Blood on the Tracks, or the desire to hear the “Meeting Across the River / Jungleland” sequence leads to an immediate play of Born to Run. If their catalogs are a diverse, highly regarded restaurant menu, I tend to order the same dishes even though I’m confident I’ll like a lot more than what I’ve already tried. With these records, it leads to the dual sense of embarrassment and excitement of making a late discovery. I might feel foolish for only coming around to Blonde on Blonde recently, but it also means that it’s a new, exciting record to digest.
This is my experience with “No Surrender” a couple years ago. Simply put, it never registered on my radar, as I spent far more time in other parts of Springsteen’s catalog. It most likely caught my attention when I wanted to hear “I’m On Fire” and I let the album continue playing. The driving rhythm and the quick yet effortless way Springsteen tosses off each line hooked me more than the words, but there’s still a part of me that completely understands the “we learned more from a three-minute record, baby / than we ever did in school” line. Tonight, I’m keying in on the way Springsteen rhymes at the end of his lines – sometimes it’s every other line, sometimes it’s consecutive lines, and sometimes it’s three out of four lines rhyming. It’s the type of rhyme that doesn’t call attention to itself. Instead, these rhymes help link these lines together and, in a strange way, make them feel like they move even quicker. In the context of an album with an extremely dated sound, “No Surrender” manages to convey its urgent tone and driving feel beneath the booming production. I’ll probably keep listening to it on a semi-regular basis until I get the urge to order off a different part of the menu.
More on Bruce Springsteen: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm
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