Lyrics and Music

"Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it. They carry it with them every step that they take. 'Till someday they just cut it loose; cut it loose or let it drag them down."

No one could ever accuse me of being a fan of Bruce Springsteen. I like a few of his songs and admire the energy and effort he gives his work, but much of his stuff misses, just slightly, the target for me. One song that doesn't is Darkness on The Edge of Town, from which the above lyric comes. It may be the best thing he's written.

Springsteen, headed for a spot out 'neath Abram's Bridge.

Now, as is often the case, the lyrics without the music are banal, stripped of what gives them their power. And so the above lines, on their own, fall flat. To feel their full and true effect, one must hear them as their writer meant you to hear them: set to music and preferably in concert, since live music is decidedly superior and, in this case, the venue where conventional wisdom says Springsteen shines. I like this version.

I have often wondered: many Latin and Greek poems were originally set to music now lost or imperfectly known; how much of their intended effect are we thereby missing? Scholars continue to make valiant attempts to understand and reproduce ancient music. Here is how some ancient music, from Greek tragedies, may have sounded.