"I was bruised and battered, I couldn't tell what I felt, I was unrecognizable to myself..."
#231) "I'm On Fire" by Bruce Springsteen - This song, on the other hand, is about as universal as can be. It's Bruce's quiet moment amidst the pipe-banging bluster of Born in the USA. I guess there's "My Hometown" on that album as well, but everything is above board with "My Hometown". It's obvious what he's singing about, and you either can relate to it, or you can't. "I'm On Fire" also is obvious, but it's one of those rare moments when what becomes obvious is something intensely intimate and personal. That's artistry.
This just might be Bruce's finest song, and although I think it gets mocked by purists (Bruce is the caliber of artist to have "purists" squawking over his work, grading it, assigning it to eras, thinking they are the only ones who get it....), I think the video really does the song justice. It was innovative for its day (and heralded, I remember, as The Boss's first non-concert video). It is also, in a hundred different painstakingly subtle ways, haunting: the fact that you never see the woman's face (only her ring as she drops the car keys into his hands), Bruce driving out to the hills to deliver the car late at night, then the shot from those hills as he walks home, resigned to his place in the world...I don't know, man...this, perhaps more than any other music video I've ever seen, compels me to watch, and at the end I'm not sure how long I've been watching. Musically and visually, it's fucking hypnotic.
As for the song itself, I was there once...and yeah, that's pretty much exactly what it sounded like.
"At times it's like someone took a knife, baby edgy and dull, and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul..."
