ABSTRACT
Few writers since the 1970s have helped bridge the gap between journalistic rock criticism and academic popular music scholarship more than Simon Frith. During the 1980s, Frith, like many others, was intrigued by the overwhelming popularity of Bruce Springsteen, whose two mid-decade releases, Born in the USA and Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band Live 1975–85 combined to sell nearly 30 million records in the United States alone. Even in Britain, where the winter charts are dominated by TV-advertised anthologies, the Springsteen set at £25 brought in more money than the tight-margin single-album compilations. Like artists in other media Springsteen is concerned to give emotions a narrative setting, to situate them in time and place, to relate them to the situations they explain or confuse. Springsteen’s protagonists, victims and criminals, defeated and enraged, are treated tenderly, their hopes honoured, their failure determined by circumstance.
