Bruce Springsteen
Wrecking Ball

Falling in love at first sight (or rather at first listen) with a CD: yes, it is still possible despite record companies, Disney Channel, house music, and various profaners doing everything they can to kill music.

The Boss still manages to trigger that mechanism, that series of chain reactions typical of human beings, that chemistry that is both rational and irrational which we call "falling in love." "Wrecking Ball" captures from "We Take Care Of Our Own" to "We Are Alive," keeping attention alive throughout all eleven tracks. It's an authentic magic, a spell that cannot be broken from start to finish.

Bruce offers us his vision of the individual within today's society: a lost individual crushed by the powerful, an everyday individual with a bank account in the red and a family to think about, a prisoner of routine and the ever more precarious rhythms of work (or the search for an increasingly unreachable job). In this CD, the current reality of the beating heart of a society adrift is shown, a substantial part without more reference points and without more ground beneath their feet. The individual suffocates, barely surviving within a system that revolves around money: "We're going to the town now, looking for easy money."

We have lost ourselves, we have been deluded: "Where's the love that has not forsaken me? Where's the work that set my hands, my soul free? Where's the spirit that'll reign, reign over me? Where's the promise, from sea to shining sea?"

In this atmosphere, dreams remain and hearts continue to beat, but they are dreams and hearts with increasingly weaker features and beats. However, dreams and hearts must continue to shine and continue to violently pulse to show those in power that we are alive, that we don't just limit ourselves to mere existence, that we want to breathe new air: "In the dark our spirits rise to carry the fire and light the spark to stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart."

"Wrecking Ball" is social criticism, criticism that touches the soul of anyone who listens to the Boss. The good Springsteen attacks again government and lack of values, describing a situation where everything should be wiped clean and started anew. However, he alternates acute moments of pessimism with moments of hope: it's dark, but we can light some lights.

Bruce is brilliant. He manages to blend different genres into a single CD: from rock to folk, passing through country, and in "Rocky Ground" we even have a rap piece. It shifts to slow and gloomy rhythms like "Jack Of All Trades" where we are lulled by a melancholic piano, to lively rhythms inviting a radical change in our lives and everything around us, like "Shackled And Drawn." Authentic chills of anger. A destructive emotion that reaches its peak in the homonymous song of the CD, "Wrecking Ball." A true call to revolution.

We eagerly await the arrival of the Boss and his musical army in Italy in June. In the meantime, let's follow his advice and remember that we too are part of this "land of hope and dreams" without making deals with higher plans. Each of us is a "wrecking ball" and this "wrecking ball" scares someone up high.

"Tomorrow there'll be sunshine and all this darkness past."