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There's a reason we turn to Bruce Springsteen in tough times
Somewhere on the internet today, there’s a good chance someone’s watching Elisabeth Nysgård-Pearson’s April 2025 performance of Bruce Springsteen’s “Tougher Than The Rest” on Norway’s version of The Voice. An assistant professor of music at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Nysgård-Pearson seems an unlikely candidate for a viral hit, yet her pitch-perfect tone has reached across the globe.
If they’re not watching Nysgård-Pearson perform the song from Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love album, they can watch a version from Chris LeDoux, Shawn Colvin, Emmylou Harris, South African singer-songwriter Elandré or even Cher. Released in 1988, there has been an upload of the song available almost since the dawn of YouTube. Springsteen’s original recording has 105 million views on YouTube on his official channel. No matter the version, clicks and likes seem to be having a resurgence.
I’ve listened to all of them lately.
The comments on these videos span the decades, connecting people to their lost loves, their lost family members, their lost youth.
“My dad and I danced with this song while he cooked dinner at night. I miss him so much …”
“This song got me through my divorce. Thank you, Bruce.”
“I dedicated this song to my wife......and proved it......just celebrated our 21st anniversary.......Bruce has seen me through more s— than I care to remember…”
“Tougher Than the Rest” is an odd song. The lyrics don’t land on the beat, where you expect them to. Sentences are broken up awkwardly. The simple, crashy snare is left raw, without the audio processing often added to recordings to round and fatten a drum sound. The synth and splashy reverb throughout are all mood and pad against the loneliness of the message.
Listening to the song, you feel alone in a crowd, the shine and illusion of romance gone. You get the feeling the bar where the song takes place is grungy and the beer is warm. This is not a happy party song.
So somebody ran out
Left somebody’s heart in a mess
What an achingly casual way to refer to sorrow. And though the pain feels exquisitely personal, the bitter truth is, it’s not special. We’ve all been there. We all know heartbreak and loss.
But in spite of the pain, we’ll daydream. We’ll think about trying again, even if our fantasy of a Prince or Princess Charming has died. Even if we once looked for a white horse, we know we’d now settle for a fellow traveler on the road.
Some girls they want a handsome Dan
Or some good-lookin’ Joe
On their arm, some girls
Like a sweet-talkin’ Romeo
Well, ‘round here, baby
I learned you get what you can get
Damn.
This week, 20th Century Studios will release a new Springsteen biopic, “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” The film shows Springsteen on the cusp of superstardom, when he fell into a deep depression. Faced with mounting pressure to release another big-sound rock and roll record, he instead stripped away all the trappings of the genre and recorded the songs unaccompanied in his home on a four-track cassette recorder, producing an album that’s imperfect and naked in its sound and presentation.
Meanwhile, “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band,” a documentary following Bruce and the band through their 2023-2024 tour, is currently streaming on Hulu/Disney+. In June, Springsteen released “Tracks II: The Lost Albums,” eighty-three songs, many previously unreleased, recorded between 1983 - 2018. A 17-minute documentary, “Inside Tracks II: The Lost Albums,” came out the same month.
Right now, Bruce is everywhere.
Maybe he and “Tougher Than the Rest” are rising again because his weary testament to possibilities speaks for a lot of Americans at the moment. So many of us feel disillusioned, disgusted and betrayed. Something we thought we knew and could count on — something we believed in and loved — is being dismantled and defiled.
Many of us wake up each day with sorrow for what we’ve lost and dread for what lies ahead. While Springsteen’s fan base is largely made up of Baby Boomers and older Gen Xers, that fandom has been passed down through the generations. And even those who didn’t grow up in a Springsteen household can relate to “The River,” “The Ghost of Tom Joad” and “Wrecking Ball” as choices, freedoms and jobs disappear.
The cost of groceries has risen 17.8% since 2022. Unemployment is rising. At least 700,000 government employees have been furloughed, and at least 1,000,000 are working without pay. The economic effects will trickle down to all of us.
As Americans, we’ve been raised to expect that wrongs will be righted, that truth will prevail, and that no matter how dark our days, justice will bend toward fairness and reason. But right now our country is unrecognizable to a lot of us — leaving so many lives in a mess.
We’ve lost faith in our elections, and in the courts, especially the highest court in the land. Three-quarters of Americans view the economy as being “fair to poor.” Faith requires trust, but our trust has been broken by the politicians we voted into office to steward our country.
We say we can’t stand it, that we don’t recognize our country, that we can’t see how America will survive this. We might say we’d leave if we could.
But we don’t.
Hope keeps us here. Hope, like Springsteen, is quintessentially American. And hope is a throughline in Springsteen’s songs — “Born To Run,” “Land of Hope and Dreams” and “The Rising” — delivering victory through adversity. Hope is what can be, what might be. Hope offers promise that we’ll turn a corner if we can just hang in there a little longer. Hope is that “thin, thin line” when the road is dark and we’re looking for the light.
Perhaps “Tougher Than The Rest” resonates with me and so many others right now because we understand what the song lays out plainly: We’ve been around a time or two. We’re used up. This is no breathless affair. There are no daisies or barefoot picnics. We’re living here, in reality — weary and without illusion. We know this might all fall apart.
And yet.
There it is, the promise of salvation. Nothing is easy, but if we persevere …
Well, there’s another dance.
All you gotta do is say yes.
