Bruce Springsteen would probably be the first person to say that he is far from the greatest singer in the world.
He clearly had what it took to be a musical prophet of rock and roll, but whenever he opened his mouth, he wasn’t exactly going to reach the same heights that Freddie Mercury did when he was singing for Queen. But ‘The Boss’ knew that what he lacked in technical ability he made up for with passion, and that’s what fuelled some of the greatest records pop music ever produced.
Because when you look at the best albums of all time, not all of them are necessarily pristine. Hell, there are far too many people who still claim that Bob Dylan sounds like nails on a chalkboard every single time that he performs, but he wasn’t about to change what he was doing to suit a panel of judges. He was singing what was in his heart, and that was more than enough half the time.
The same goes for Springsteen when looking at the time he put into his tracks. There was no doubt that he spent as much time as he could making sure that a song like ‘Born to Run’ came out absolutely perfect, but when listening to an album like Nebraska, he knew that there was something beautiful about frail his voice sounded next to his acoustic guitar when he was laying down those demos.
But even if he was a songwriter first, Springsteen knew how to write with someone’s voice in mind. He wanted to make sure that he did everything he could to sound like Roy Orbison back in the day, but when he started cutting his teeth playing the true classics, he knew that the greatest singers of all time were brought up singing their hearts out to soul music long before rock and roll was born.
Although the archetype of soul came from people like Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, Springsteen felt a certain kinship with that kind of music before he even started singing it. No one was expecting a gospel-style breakdown every single time he played ‘Hungry Heart’ live, but looking at the way that he interacts with the crowd, it has the same kind of effect that you would see out of a typical soul concert.
And when looking back on the greatest records from the likes of the Temptations, Springsteen couldn’t be convinced that any other genre came close to what they could do when working on his album Only the Strong Survive, saying, “The greatest vocal music is gospel music and soul music. The greatest singers are in those genres, so I had to find my own way through it and try to communicate the joy in this music. It was really a celebration of these records and these incredible singers.”
It’s hard to really argue with that assessment, either. While people like Franklin and Whitney Houston deserve to be in a class all their own for the kind of music they brought to the table, there’s something about those gospel runs that moves something in the audience’s gut that really can’t be reproduced anywhere else.
Then again, the genres almost don’t matter to a certain degree. No matter whether you’re listening to Sam and Dave talking about how their hearts are leaping out of their chests or Springsteen telling the tale of kids from the wrong side of the tracks, the reason why everyone is so invested in those stories is because of what they bring to it with their delivery. They might not have lived every word of the song, but no one could doubt that they felt every word coming out of their mouth.
