Grouse du Jour

I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the days when Bruce Springsteen agonized over albums for years before releasing them. They may have lumbered with portentiousness, but at least they were more interesting than Working on a Dream. The early albums interested me as he mythologized youth, and I understand there coming a day when he couldn't believe in those myths anymore. But his best music deals with myths - confronting them on Born in the U.S.A. - or inhabiting new ones on his folkier efforts including The Seeger Sessions. Singing conventional rock songs about the conventional thoughts of a man in his late 50s makes him, well, conventional. And really - it sounds like he's trying too hard.

Showing Your Ass

I'm not someone who normally cranks on kidsthesedays and their lack of historical sense, but sometimes the only way to learn not to reveal your ignorance is to be called out. RollingStone.com has musicians handicapping the Grammy races, and in his commentary on Record of the Year, Nick Jonas says:

"Chasing Pavements" brings me back to great songwriting and classic, big-band sounds — Ella Fitzgerald comes to mind. There's a great chorus, and a beautiful string line that makes me smile every time I hear it.

Adele sounds like Ella? Really? Or does it sound like a song from some point in the past sung by an African-American woman? That is so not-close that it's hard not to think of it as an unintended variation on 'they all look alike to me.' Or, more accurately, Jonas pulling respected names out of his mental rolodex even though he's never heard them. And he should know that songs with lots of instruments and big band jazz aren't the same thing.

Funny in its own right is Bruce Springsteen's "Girls in Their Summer Clothes" being nominated for Best Rock Song. Does it rock? And the girls in their summer clothes pass him by because he looks like a dour, middle-aged man on the cover. Of course they'd pass him by.

Know Your Market

Starting Monday at 11:59 p.m., NPR.org will stream Bruce Springsteen's upcoming album, Working on a Dream. The album won't be in stores until January 27.

To his credit, Springsteen hasn't seemed to wrestle awkwardly with his changing place in the market as he has aged - not since Human Touch and Lucky Town, anyway. Still, it's interesting to think about the role local FM rock stations played in his career up to Darkness on the Edge of Town. Before Born to Run, his reputation as a great live act kept his name in public when listeners weren't convinced by the albums, and the bootlegs of radio broadcasts suggested that it wasn't all hype. In the period between Born to Run and Darkness when he was in legal limbo dealing with then-manager Mike Appel, the slow-churn of those bootlegs through the underground helped spread the word of his live shows at a time when he depended on them for income. They also kept semi-fresh music in front of fans and gave them something to convert unbelievers with, much like Lil Wayne's mixtapes did before Tha Carter III.