“I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream,” said Bruce Springsteen at the media launch of his 2012 album Wrecking Ball. It’s hard to imagine a British pop star so earnestly explaining the role of our nation’s mythologies in their work, but for US musicians, interrogating that precious, unifying ideal is a well-established convention. From Elvis’s “American Trilogy” to Beyoncé’s gospel-infused “Ameriican Requiem”, it has long been grist to the mill for stateside artists.
But the Boss is a special case. In the late 1980s, the BBC comedy show A Bit of Fry & Laurie featured a sketch in which a bandana-wearing heartland rocker sits at a piano, belting out the words, “America, America, America…” – until Stephen Fry walks over and punches him. Bruce is basically that piano man.
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