Oh Lord yes, and with a ridiculously smug, sanctimonious tone.
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For cùnts it might. :shrug: I'm an adult and have long since realised that 'authenticity' is a childish snare and a delusion. The idea of 'authenticity' in pop music is so absurd as to be funny, in fact. Do these people think less of Adam Ant because he wasn't really a pirate?
Agreed. However...... there is perhaps a higher standard when one writes songs as a vehicle for social change. In the same way, I care little if a politician wishes to spend an evening with coke and hoookers. If he spends his working day lecturing the rest of us on family values and drug law then I have a bit of an issue with it.
As I say, with Dylan is really doesnt matter at all. Did you see the fuss people made when they realised that Billy Bragg lives in a fairly large house?
You know, this is an interesting topic, and I am gathering materials for a script about it. It's not only an American problem though. In England in the 19th century there was a lot of striving after epic forms, romances. This required an assessment of whether something was legitimate. Macpherson's Ossian of course was not an ancient Gaelic text, but was a fake created by Macpherson himself. Not to say that the result is devoid of quality. I actually, dare I admit it, like Ossian.
I like the classic Springsteen but I wrestle with the unselective Springsteen. Who doesn't like Darlington County or Nebraska? It's that stuff he did in the 90s or early 2000s which is problematic. He uses the blue-collar mantle to start yammering on about post-9/11 themes. In other words, he's parodying himself. Because I had questions about the authenticity of the original, I have those questions doubly when it concerns something which feels tendentious, rabble-rousing, coercive to the norm.
He's very very talented, but can we decide what's good and what's not good. Can we say to Springsteen, No, sir. Not that one!
Yes, another that ranks alongside the worst he has ever recorded. In Working on the Highway he is actually arrested for what I assume is statutory rape.
As I dont believe he has ever personally fallen foul of this particular law, the song is not only dreadful and inappropriate, it also make him a bit of a fake. Claiming to be a ***** when he isn't. Typical!
Then we have the sexual predator in I'm On Fire, enquiringly as to whether the little girl's daddy is home. Its just all kinds of wrong.....
Oh god, this is ridiculous. The protagonists in each of these songs is probably like 18 or 19, and it's the Boss Man or else tyrannical patriarch who wants to put a clamp on it. Statutory rape comes into play if it's a grossly dissimilar age. What we are talking about, O man of the people, is a situation where some worker bloke can't make anything happen to change his life. He thinks, perhaps foolishly, that some little hottie is going to improve his lot or else validate his self-image. Poignant and mistaken but not grounds for disapproval.