People // Dan Zaccagnino // Blog

In the midst of everything that was going on with CMJ (we had 30 bands play at the Indaba Loft!) I managed to squeeze in two Bruce Springsteen concerts last week. They were both pretty incredible - wonderful seats thanks to a friend who works on the tour. So incredible my girlfriend actually fainted like it was a Beatles concert (in reality I think it was just really hot and none of us ate dinner, but it sounds better the other way).

 Anyway, at one point in the show he sang a new song, Livin' In The Future, that is about American politics and he prefaced it with some comments about the topic. A few people cheered, a few people said "No Politics!" but it all seemd to so quintessentially Springsteen. It got me thinking more about the topic though because people always seem to LOVE to get inside a songwriters head, to learn about what they were thinking when they wrote a song. Audiences almost demand a public view into very personal things, but once those things cross a line into a topic that is slightly more contentious, artists get blamed for using their fame to express their political views.

 I'm not saying I agree or disagree with the Boss about his political views (OK, I happen agree but that's not the point), but no matter what the views are does anyone else see it as hypocritical to be so interested in what a person writes a song about, unless it's something your not interested in hearing and then they are in the wrong for even saying it?