Springsteen should just ‘Shut up and sing’

OPINION:

I have been saying rock star Bruce Springsteen is highly overrated longer than anyone else — for more than 50 years, as a matter of fact, ever since Oct. 27, 1975, when his publicist got his mug on the covers of both Time (“Rock’s New Sensation”) and Newsweek (“Making of a Rock Star”) in the same week.

My distaste for celebrity shlock posing as serious news even prompted me at the time to subscribe instead to Time and Newsweek’s hard-news-only rival, U.S. News & World Report magazine.

In more recent years, disdain on the right for Mr. Springsteen has only grown as he has exploited his rock demigod status as a gigantic soapbox and megaphone to push a far-left political agenda, most notably in the form of incurable Stage 4 Trump derangement syndrome.

Mr. Springsteen, dubbed by fans as “The Boss,” went on a six-minute screed against President Trump in a concert at Nationals Park in Washington on May 27.

“So many of our elected leaders have failed us that this American tragedy can only be stopped by the American people, you. There is no one coming to save us. We’ve got to do it ourselves,” he said, according to an account at the IrishStar.com. “So, join us and let’s fight for the America that we love.”

Still, he wasn’t through: “Do you hear me, Washington? Do you hear me, Washington? Are you with us, Washington? Are you with us, Washington? Let them hear you at the f——— White House!”

Mr. Trump fired back at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on July 24 by sarcastically suggesting that Mr. Springsteen’s “Land of Hope and Dreams Tour” had been renamed “Bored in the USA,” riffing off the title of his best-known song, “Born in the USA.”

It is worth noting that Mr. Springsteen has not had a Top 10 hit single since 1994’s “Streets of Philadelphia” and has been dining out on his “Glory Days” of the mid-1980s ever since.

Even though he can still fill stadiums for his concert tours, his anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement rant “Streets of Minneapolis,” released as a single earlier this year, failed to chart on the all-format, consumption-based Billboard Hot 100. That ought to tell him something.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham long ago had the proper response to the politicking of entertainers and celebrities such as Mr. Springsteen in the title of her 2003 book, “Shut Up & Sing.”

Now, we are no longer Mr. Springsteen’s only critics — and certainly not the most notable ones. In recent weeks, two of his fellow rock stars have publicly taken issue with the New Jersey-based balladeer’s onstage rantings.

In a July 11 interview on The New York Times’ podcast, “The Interview,” the Rolling Stones’ legendary frontman, Mick Jagger, was asked by host David Marchese about Mr. Springsteen.

Mr. Springsteen “clearly sees his job as engaging in a meaningful back and forth” with fans, Mr. Marchese suggested euphemistically, before asking Mr. Jagger: “What does your relationship to the audience mean to you? What do they represent, all those people out there?”

“The bottom line of my thing, really, is that my job in the live-music world is [for] those people that come is to have the best time they possibly can,” said the Rolling Stones icon, who had been rocking and rolling for more than a decade before Mr. Springsteen burst onto the national scene.

“For two hours or whatever it is, to forget all their problems, and the problems of the world, and their mortgages, and whatever — just to give them the best time they can have,” Mr. Jagger explained.

“Your job is to make them have the best time they possibly can,” he added.

On that score, Mr. Springsteen, 76, would do well to listen to his elders. Mr. Jagger turned 83 on July 26, about two weeks after the Stones released their 25th studio album, “Foreign Tongues,” on July 10.

On July 20, perhaps picking up on what the Rolling Stones frontman had said nine days earlier, Jonathan Cain, longtime keyboardist for the rock band Journey, was less diplomatic, shall we say, in his criticism of Mr. Springsteen’s onstage polemics.

Acknowledging being “a die-hard conservative,” Mr. Cain, in a podcast interview, called Mr. Springsteen an “annoying, bitter old man.” He said the outspoken New Jersey-based rocker should just “shut up.”

On the “Complete Disaster Network” podcast, he said, “You know, really, honestly, shut up, Bruce, you know? … Do your art. I try to keep politics out of my music.”

I would add, less delicately, that Mr. Springsteen needs to be reminded: “Opinions are like a———-. Everybody has one,” as actor Clint Eastwood’s police inspector character, “Dirty” Harry Callahan, said in the 1988 crime thriller “The Dead Pool.”

Mr. Springsteen is, of course, entitled to his opinions, however wrongheaded, just as everyone else is. However, just because he has a high-profile platform that most of the rest of us do not have does not mean we should take his political pronouncements seriously.

• Peter Parisi is a former editor for The Washington Times.